Never Deceive a Duke (4 page)

“Oh, I doubt it,” Gareth sneered, then tossed off the last of his brandy.

“Go down for a fortnight,” Rothewell suggested. “Just to make sure there is a competent estate agent in place. Have a good look at the account books to ensure you are not being cheated. Put the fear of God into the staff—and make sure they know for whom they work now. Then you can return to London, and quit that shabby little house of yours in Stepney.”

Gareth looked at him incredulously. “And do what?”

Rothewell made a circle in the air with his glass. “One of these grand Mayfair mansions hereabout must belong to the Duke of Warneham,” he suggested. “If not, buy one. You need not rusticate the rest of your days—and you certainly do not need to continue slaving in the service of Neville’s.”

“Impossible,” said Gareth. “It cannot be let go, even for a fortnight.”

“Zee is not leaving for a few days yet,” Rothewell said. “And if worse comes to worst, I daresay old Bakely and I can hobble along well enough to hire—”

“You?” Gareth interjected. “Rothewell, do you even know how to find Neville’s offices?”

“No, but my coachman has gone there almost every day for the last nine months,” he answered. “Look, Gareth, who is Neville’s nearest competitor?”

Gareth hesitated. “Carwell’s over in Greenwich, I suppose. They are a little larger, but we have been giving them a run for their money.”

Rothewell set his glass on the sideboard. “Then I shall simply hire away their business agent,” he replied. “Every man has his price.”

“Hire him to replace
me
?”

Rothewell plucked the empty glass from Gareth’s hand and returned with it to the sideboard. “My friend, you are just kidding yourself if you think that your old life is not over,” he said, drawing the stopper from the brandy decanter. “I know what it is to be saddled with a duty one does not want. But you have no choice. You are an English gentleman. A state of denial will get you nowhere.”

“You are a grand one to give advice about denial,” said Gareth churlishly, “when you are drinking too damned much, and letting your life and your skills rot away.”

“Et tu Brute?”
snapped Rothewell over his shoulder. “Perhaps I ought to dress you up in a muslin gown and call you ‘sister.’ I daresay I’d not miss Xanthia in the least.”

Gareth fell silent. Rothewell refilled both glasses, then gave the bellpull a sharp jerk. Trammel appeared almost instantly. “Tell the staff to prepare my traveling coach,” he ordered. “Mr. Lloyd shall have need of it at daybreak. They are to meet him at his home in Stepney.”

“Really, Rothewell, this is unnecessary,” said Gareth, springing to his feet.

But Trammel had vanished. “You cannot very well go to Selsdon Court in a gig,” said Rothewell. “Nor in a canal boat.”

“Well, I won’t go in a borrowed carriage, by God.”

Rothewell crossed the room and pressed the drink into Gareth’s hand. “The coach, if I am not much mistaken, is technically a company asset belonging to Neville’s.”

“By whom I am no longer employed,” snapped Gareth.

“But of which you are still part owner,” Rothewell answered. “I am sure any number of fine carriages await you at Selsdon Court, old friend. Send mine back once you are settled.”

“You will let me see no peace, will you?”

“I have seen none. Why should you?” Then, with mock solemnity, the baron raised his glass. “To His Grace, the Duke of Warneham. Long may he reign.”

T
he house was still as death, the scent of fresh bread and cabbage hanging thickly in the air. The ropes of the bed groaned as his mother pulled herself up, inch by agonizing inch. “Gabriel,
tatellah,
come to me.”

He crawled up the mattress on hands and knees, then curled against her like a puppy. His mother’s fingers were cold as they threaded through his hair. “Gabriel, an English gentleman always does his duty,” she said, her voice weak. “Promise…promise me you will be a good boy—an English gentleman. Like your father. Yes?”

He nodded, his hair scrubbing against the coverlet. “Mamma, are you going to die?”

“No,
tatellah,
only my human form,” she whispered. “A mother’s love never dies. It reaches out, Gabriel, across time and across the grave. A mother’s love can never be broken. Tell me you understand this?”

He did not, but he nodded anyway. “I will always do my duty, Mamma,” he vowed. “I will be a gentleman. I promise.” His mother sighed, and relaxed again into the blessed oblivion of sleep.

“All I am saying, my lady, is that it does not seem quite fair.” Nellie drew the brush down the length of her mistress’s heavy blond hair. “A woman ought not be put out of her own home—not even a widow.”

“This is not my home, Nellie,” said the duchess firmly. “Women do not own homes. Men decide where they will live.”

Nellie grunted disdainfully. “My aunt Margie owns a home,” she said. “And a tavern, too. No man will be putting her out of ’em anytime soon, depend upon it.”

The duchess looked up into the mirror and smiled faintly. “I rather envy your aunt Margie,” she said. “She has a freedom that women…well, women like me are brought up never to expect.”

“Noblewomen, you mean,” said Nellie knowingly. “No, my lady, I’ve seen how some folk live. And I’d rather earn my crust with my own sweat any day.”

“You are very wise, Nellie.”

The duchess’s gaze dropped to her hands clasped tightly in her lap. They had been together, she and Nellie, for ten years now. Nellie’s competent hands had begun to show her age, and her brow was permanently furrowed. And when they were alone—which was often—the maid frequently regressed to her mistress’s former names or titles, sometimes even a combination thereof. The duchess did not bother to correct her. She had no fondness for the lofty position fate had bestowed upon her. Before this marriage, she had hoped only to live out her years in quiet widowhood. Now, perhaps, she might at long last get her wish.

“Has there been nothing, then, from Lord Swinburne?” Nellie laid aside the brush, to pick through a porcelain dish filled with hairpins.

“A letter from Paris.” The duchess tried to brighten her expression. “Papa is to be a father again—and quite soon. His wedding trip has apparently been all one might wish for.”

“But what about you, my lady?” Nellie’s eyes met hers in the mirror. “Can’t you go back home? Greenfields is such a big house—not quite as vast as this, I know, but surely ’tis enough for the three of you?”

The duchess hesitated. “Penelope is very young, and newly wed,” she said. “Papa says that perhaps—perhaps after the child is born…” She let her words drift away.

Nellie pursed her lips, and twisted up the first section of her mistress’s hair. “I think I see the way of things,” she muttered, wrestling with a pin. “One house, one mistress?”

“Penelope is very young,” the duchess said again. “And why should I wish to return home? I would feel out of place, I daresay. Papa is right—in this, at least.”

“Lord Albridge, then?” Nellie suggested.

“Heavens, Nellie! My brother is a gazetted womanizer. A sister underfoot is the last thing a rakehell would wish for.” She stilled the maid’s hand by covering it with her own. “Do not worry, Nellie. I am not poor. Once we know the new duke’s wishes, why, perhaps I can lease a small house?”

“Something, ma’am,” said the maid. “Anything. There’s been a cloud hanging over this place since the old duke’s death. And people do talk.”

“It is gossip, and nothing more,” the duchess answered. “But we shall find something—in Bath, I think. Or Brighton? Would you like that?”

Nellie wrinkled her nose. “Ooh, I don’t think so, ma’am,” she said. “I’m a country girl. And it’s not myself I’m worried for. I can go to work for my aunt Margie.”

The duchess smiled wanly. “Has she room enough for the two of us?” she asked. “I think perhaps I should make a tolerable chambermaid.”

“Poo!” Nellie snatched up her fingers. “With these hands? I doubt it, my lady. Besides, I’ll go where you go. You know that.”

“Yes, Nellie. I know that.”

Just then, the room dimmed, as if a lamp had been turned down. Nellie glanced over her shoulder at the wide bank of windows. “Here it comes again, ma’am,” she warned. “That dratted rain.”

“Perhaps it will pass us by,” the duchess murmured mechanically.

“Aye, well, you can wish,” said the maid. “But I feel it, ma’am. I truly do.”

“Feel what, precisely?”

The maid lifted one shoulder. “There’s something queer in the air,” she said. “Something…I don’t know. Just a storm, I reckon. It’s this miserable August heat. We’re all wilting.”

“It has been unpleasant,” the duchess acknowledged.

But Nellie just shrugged again, twisted another hank of hair aloft, and studied it. “I think I’m going to do this up high,” she said. “Something very…duchessly—is that a word?”

“It is now,” said the duchess. “But the hair—really, Nellie. Do not waste your time. Just throw it up.”

“Come now, ma’am,” the maid cajoled. “He won’t be like all those other fellows who’ve been trotting down from London in droves. He’s the wicked prodigal cousin. You ought to get all togged out and properly impress him.”

It really did matter to Nellie, the duchess realized, so she forced anther smile. She had worried very little about her appearance of late. Still, as Nellie pointed out, it had not stopped the suitors who sometimes vied for her hand. Oh, they called, ostensibly, to express sympathy, and to see how she “got on.” But the duchess knew vultures when she saw them—polite, well-bred vultures, of course, but in search of carrion, just the same. Apparently, every scoundrel in London was fishing for a fortune. The more respectable men kept their distance.

“Of course you are right,” she finally said. “Yes, by all means, Nellie. Let us be duchessly.”

The maid’s deft hands made short work of the duchess’s tresses, drawing them up into an elegant pile of gold, which spilled into curls at the nape of her neck. “Will you wear the aubergine silk, ma’am?” asked Nellie as she wound the last strands into place. “I’ll thread some black ribbons through here to match.”

“Yes, and my black shawl, I suppose.”

Nellie unfurled a length of black ribbon, which was looking a little worn. “I reckon this ought to be replaced,” she muttered. “But just a few more weeks, my lady, and you can put off this black for good.”

“Yes, Nellie. That will be lovely.”

But she would not put off her mourning. Not really. She would, the duchess imagined, wear it all the days of her life—inwardly, if not otherwise.

Suddenly, a commotion sounded in the cobblestone courtyard below. The clamor of horses’ hooves along with the grind of carriage wheels, and, above it all, the butler barking anxiously at the servants. Inside, footsteps began to thunder up and down the servants’ stairs. The house was on edge today—and not without reason.

“Sounds like a carriage coming through the gateposts,” said Nellie grimly, going to the window. “Ooh, and it’s a fine one, too, ma’am. A glossy black landau with red wheels. And black-and-red livery, too. Must be a regular nabob, that one.”

“Yes, our poor little orphaned cousin!” murmured the duchess.

“Oh, I’d say the new master hasn’t lived hand-to-mouth in a mighty long while, ma’am,” said Nellie, peering round the drapery. “And now he’s about to get the royal treatment. Coggins is queuing the staff down the steps, somber as a row of gravestones.”

The duchess cut her gaze toward the windows. “Isn’t it raining, Nellie?” she asked. “Mrs. Musbury still has that dreadful cough.”

“Aye, it’s peppering down all right.” The maid’s nose was almost pressed to the glass now. “But Coggins has the evil eye on ’em, ma’am, and no one’s so much as twitching. And he—wait! The carriage has stopped. One of his footmen is getting down to open the door. And he’s getting out. And he’s…oh, holy gawd…”

The duchess turned around on her stool. “Nellie,
what
on earth?”

“Oh, that’s the very thing, ma’am,” said Nellie in a voice of quiet awe. “He doesn’t look earthly. More like an angel, I’d say—but one of the grim, bad-tempered kind. Like the ones on the ballroom ceiling slinging down those lightning bolts and looking all angry?”

“Nellie, please don’t be fanciful.”

“Oh, I’m not being fanciful, ma’am.” Her voice was oddly flat. “And he’s awfully young, ma’am. Not what I expected a’tall.”

For a long moment, they listened to the murmur of the introductions below as Nellie kept up a commentary about his hair, the breadth of his shoulders, the cut of his coat, and precisely which step he now stood on. The new duke was taking his time, it would seem. The audacity of him to keep loyal servants standing in the rain!

Slowly, the duchess felt an almost foreign emotion begin to stir. It was
anger
. It surprised her to feel it. She dearly hoped Mrs. Musbury would not worsen. She half-hoped the new duke took consumption. And she really wished Nellie would not continue to rattle on about lightning bolts. A bad-tempered angel indeed!

Just then, thunder rolled ominously in the distance, and the sound of the rain on the roofs ratcheted up into a cacophonous roar. Downstairs, doors began to slam. Shouts rang out. Harnesses jingled and the carriage began to rattle away. For an instant, everything was chaos.

“See, ma’am?” said Nellie, turning from the window. “It’s about to happen.”

The duchess frowned. “What, pray, is about to happen?”

“The lightning. The
storm
.” Brow oddly furrowed, Nellie smoothed her hands down the front of her smock. “It’s about to break, ma’am. I—I feel it.”

The great entrance hall of Selsdon Court was almost grandiose in its emptiness. Only the very rich could afford an empty room containing little more than marble, gilding, and fine art. Gareth stood in the midst of it and slowly turned in a circle. It was the very same. Vast, polished perfection.

Even the collection of old masters, Gareth noted, hung in precisely the same arrangement. The Poussin above the Leyster. The van Eyck to the left of de Hooch. The three Rembrandts in a massive, magnificent grouping between the drawing room doors. There were a dozen more, each of them well-remembered. For an instant, Gareth closed his eyes as the servants swarmed around him; the footmen attending to the luggage, the maids and kitchen staff returning to their tasks. It sounded the same. It even smelled the same.

And yet it was not. He opened his eyes and looked around. Some of the under servants, he had noticed, looked perhaps vaguely familiar. But other than that, he recognized no one. Perhaps that was because few dared lift their eyes to him. What had he expected? They had doubtless heard the rumors.

Gone was Peters, Selsdon Court’s condescending butler. Mr. Nowell, his uncle’s favorite flunky, must have gone on to his great reward as well. Even Mrs. Harte, the grumpy old housekeeper, was nowhere to be seen, and in her place was a thin, mouse-haired lady with kind eyes and a frightfully bad cough. Mrs. Musgrove?

No. That was not quite right.

“Coggins,” said Gareth, leaning nearer the butler. “I want a roster of all the staff by name and position, to include their ages and their years of service.”

The servant’s eyes flared with alarm, but it was quickly veiled. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“And this estate agent, Mr. Watson,” Gareth added. “Where the devil is he?”

Again, the faint look of alarm. That instant of hesitation. It made Gareth wonder what these people had been told of him. That he ground servants’ bones to make his bread?

“I did not have an opportunity to inform Mr. Watson of your arrival, Your Grace,” the butler murmured. They all
murmured
—as if the house were some sort of mausoleum. “I fear he has gone to Portsmouth.”

“Portsmouth?” said Gareth.

“Yes, sir.” The butler gave a strange, stiff bow. “He is to collect a piece of equipment—a threshing machine—which is coming down from Glasgow.”

“They make such contraptions nowadays?”

The butler nodded. “It was ordered by the late duke prior to his death, but”—here he paused and let his eyes dart about the room—“they are not popular in certain circles. There have been, shall we say,
difficulties
further south.”

“Ah.” Gareth clasped his hands behind his back. “Put men out of work, do they?”

“So some would believe, Your Grace.” A passing footman caught Coggins’s eyes, and nodded. The butler swept his hand toward one of the magnificent staircases which rose in splendid, symmetrical curves from the great hall. “Your chambers are ready now, sir, if you would care to follow me?”

“What I wish to do is to see the duchess,” Gareth returned. His tone was sharp, he knew, but he was anxious to get it over with.

To his credit, Coggins did not falter. “But of course, Your Grace,” he said. “Will you wish to freshen your wardrobe first?”

Freshen his wardrobe?
Gareth had forgotten that the denizens of Selsdon Court changed their clothes about as often as regular folk drew breath. No doubt the duchess would be appalled to receive a man still attired in clothes which he’d had on for…oh, all of seven hours. Gareth would be considered unforgivably travel-stained.
Quelle horreur!
as Mr. Kemble was fond of saying.

“Have you no valet, sir?” asked Coggins as they started up the stairs.

“No, he was insolent, so I chopped off his head.”

Coggins stopped abruptly on the stairs. He began to quiver almost imperceptibly, but whether from fear, outrage, or barely suppressed laughter, Gareth could not say.