At Last Comes Love (9 page)

“Most gossip is,” he said. “It can also be very tenacious.”

“Where is Dew?” Stephen asked grimly, looking around the room.

“I'll break his damned neck for him.”

“Tomorrow will be time enough for that,” Elliott said. “We do not need you confronting him here to add to the general delight, Stephen. Dance with Vanessa, if you will. And do watch your language in the presence of my wife and sisters-in-law. Katherine, may I have the pleasure?”

And Margaret danced with Jasper for a second time and smiled at the light, amusing banter he kept up throughout. It was truly awful to be the main focus of attention in the room, especially when she knew she had brought it on herself.

But how
could
Crispin have done this to her? She had never known him to be openly spiteful.

She was going to have to wait out the gossip with all the patience she could muster, she decided later as she rode home beside Katherine in Jasper's carriage. It ought not to take too long once the
ton
realized there was no basis to the rumor. And then she was going to settle back to her old respectable life even if it meant being a spinster and Stephen's dependent for as long as she lived.

Margaret went to bed that night before Stephen returned home. She even managed to sleep fitfully between spells of agonized wakefulness in which she remembered every secret she had poured out to that black-eyed, grim-faced stranger who had once abandoned his bride and eloped with a married lady and lived in sin with her until her death. And there were the wakeful spells in which she remembered introducing him to Crispin as her betrothed.

And Crispin had gone and told the whole world!

She even slept later than usual in the morning. Stephen was up before her. He had already breakfasted and left the house, the butler informed her when she asked.

He had left his place at the breakfast table untidy. The dishes had been cleared away, but the morning paper had been left open and bunched in a heap beside where his plate had been. Margaret went to fold it up neatly but first let her eyes rove over the topmost page. It was the one always devoted to society gossip.

And there was her own name, leaping off the page at her as if it had legs and wings.

She bent closer to read, her eyes widening in horror.

Miss Margaret Huxtable, the journalist had written, eldest sister of the Earl of Merton, had been seen sitting in scandalous seclusion in a remote alcove of Lady Tindell's ballroom the previous evening tête-à-tête with that very notorious jilt and wife-stealer, the Earl of Sheringford, whom the writer had reported seeing skulking about town a few days ago. And when confronted by a friend, who had approached in order to rescue her from scandal or even worse harm, Miss Huxtable had boldly presented the earl as her
betrothed
. The beau monde might well be asking itself if the lady was quite as respectable as she had always appeared to be. The reporter might humbly remind his readers of what had befallen her younger sister two years ago…

Margaret did not read any further. She closed the paper with trembling hands, as if she could thereby obliterate what it said. A bad dream had just turned into the worst of nightmares.

She sat down shivering and remembering how the spreading of vicious and almost entirely untrue gossip had forced Kate into marrying Jasper two years ago.

History was not about to repeat itself with her, was it?

Oh, surely not! Such catastrophes did not happen twice within the same family.

Whatever was she going to
do
?

Duncanvery much doubted that Miss Margaret Huxtable was a gossip—especially at her own expense and on the topic of her meeting with him. It must have been the military officer with the peculiar wet-sounding name and the red hair, then.

For gossip there was.

It was his mother who alerted him. She actually appeared at breakfast the morning after the Tindell ball, albeit well after Sir Graham had left for his club and just as Duncan himself was about to rise from the table. He knew she had been at the ball, though he had not been there long enough himself to see her.

“Duncan,” she said as she swept into the breakfast parlor, still clad in a dressing gown of a pale blue diaphanous material that billowed and wafted about her, though her hair had been immaculately styled and he suspected that her cheeks were rouged, “you are up already. I scarcely slept a wink all night. I feel quite haggard. But you were not in your room when we arrived home last night, you provoking man, and so there was no talking with you then. I did not hear you come home. It must have been at some unearthly hour.
Do
tell me if it is true. Can it
possibly
be?
Are
you betrothed to the Earl of Merton's eldest sister? Without a word to your own mother? It would be a splendid match for you, my love. Your grandfather will be quite reconciled to you if it
is
true. And that will be a very good thing as Graham has been grumbling and complaining, the silly man, that you will be living under his roof for the rest of our lives. Not that he does not love you in his own way, but … But speak up, do,Duncan , instead of sitting there silently as though there were nothing to tell.

Are
you betrothed?”

“In one word, Mama,” he said, hiding his surprise and signaling the butler to fill his coffee cup again, “no. Not yet, anyway, and perhaps never. I danced with the lady once last evening, that is all.”

“That is
not
all,” his mother protested. “Miss Huxtable presented you to someone—I cannot for the life of me remember who—as her betrothed. Prue Talbot told me, and she never spreads stories unless they are accurate. Besides,
everyone
was saying so.”

“Then, Mama,” he said, getting to his feet after taking one sip of the fresh coffee, “you had no need to ask me, did you? You will excuse me? I ought to have been atJackson 's Boxing Salon twenty minutes ago.”

“It is
not
true, then?” she asked, looking crestfallen.

“Miss Huxtable was provoked into saying what she did,” he said, “at my suggestion. I will be calling on her later today to discuss the matter.”

She looked befuddled but hopeful as she gazed at him and ignored the food on the plate before her.

“But when did you
meet
her,Duncan ?” she asked. “That is what has been puzzling me all night, and I daresay it is puzzling Graham too, as he could suggest no answer when I asked him that very question.

He would only grunt in that odious way of his. You have been in town only a few days. Now that I think of it, I do not believe Miss Huxtable has been here much longer. I do not remember seeing her before last evening, though I have seen her sisters everywhere and that very handsome brother of hers. Oh,
now
I see! You met elsewhere and arranged to meet again here. You—”

He took her hand in his and raised it to his lips.

“Keep all this to yourself for a while, will you, Mama?” he asked.

Though it was surely a pointless thing to ask, if the ballroom had been buzzing with the rumor last evening after he left.

“But of course,” she said. “You know that I am the soul of discretion,Duncan . I shall tell Graham what you have told me, of course, but we hold no secrets from each other.”

He went off toJackson 's. The first man he encountered there was Constantine Huxtable, and his initial suspicion that Con had been waiting there for him was soon confirmed.

“Come and spar with me, Sherry,” he said, but it was more an ultimatum than an affable invitation.

“It will be my pleasure,”Duncan said. “You look as if you are ready to punch my head in, though. Which, I must confess, is preferable to sparring with one of those fellows who like to prance about striking poses that they think make them look manly.”

Con did not laugh or even grin. He went on looking grim and a little white about the mouth.

Con was Merton's cousin, Duncan remembered suddenly. He was Constantine
Huxtable
. One would not expect there to be much love lost between the two branches of the family, though, since Con had been the eldest son of the late earl and ought by rights to have inherited the title himself. But there was that asinine law to the effect that a man—or woman—was forever illegitimate if born out of wedlock, even if his mother and father later married. A couple of days or so later in Con's case. And so when the old earl had died, it was Con's sickly young brother who had inherited and then—after
his
death—a second or third cousin. The present Merton.

Miss Margaret Huxtable's brother, in fact.

Now, why should Con care about Margaret Huxtable?

He apparently did, though.

He spoke again after they had stripped down to the waist and were in the ring, circling each other warily and taking preliminary jabs, testing the land, watching for weaknesses, looking for openings.

“I cannot believe, Sherry,” he said, “that you can be serious in your intention to marry Margaret. Why did you allow that story to spread last evening?”

Duncansaw a clear path to his opponent's chin and headed through it with a right jab. But Con neatly deflected the blow and buried one of his own inDuncan 's unprotected stomach.

It hurt like the devil, and for a momentDuncan was winded. He would not show it, though. He was a little ashamed at finding himself so out of practice, if the truth were told. He hooked his left arm wide and dealt Con a blow to the side of his head.

Con winced.

“One does not either permit a story to spread or stop it from doing so once it has started,”Duncan said. “Stories quickly develop a life of their own when there are people to begin them and people to believe them. This particular story did not even start up until after I had left the ball.”

They concentrated upon throwing punches at each other for several minutes. It became quickly obvious toDuncan that it was no friendly bout.

“You are saying, then, that the story is untrue?” Con asked somewhat later, when the ferocity of their attack had abated and they were catching their breath before going back at it.

“That I am betrothed to Miss Huxtable?”Duncan said. “Yes, it is.

That she introduced me to a popinjay in a scarlet coat as her betrothed? No, it is not. That I offered her marriage? No, it is not. I was not there to hear the details of the story myself and so am not sure what it is exactly I am being called upon to confirm or deny.”

He spotted that same path to Con's chin again—there was a definite weakness in his defenses there—and this time he successfully planted a right upper cut, snapping Con's head back. But, as before, he had left his own defenses weak, and Con buried a fist in his midriff again.Duncan received it with a woof of expelled air and stepped in closer with both fists flying. Two fists flew back at him with equal ferocity.

They pummeled each other for several more minutes without talking, until they were both sore and breathless and sweating and the strength was going from their arms. Eventually they backed off by unspoken assent, neither of them having succeeded in putting the other down.

“I like you, Sherry,” Con said, reaching for his towel. “I always did.

It did not bother me that you ran off with Mrs. Turner instead of marrying
Miss
Turner. A fellow's business is his own, and I assumed that you had your reasons for doing what you did. But this time your business is mine too.”

Duncanflexed his knuckles, though not with any intention of renewing their fight. They were looking red and even raw.

“Miss Huxtable is your business?” he asked.

“She is when someone is about to hurt her,” Con said, “even if only her reputation. She has had a raw deal of a life, Sherry, as women all too often do. She was not quite eighteen when she promised her father on his deathbed that she would make a home for her brother and sisters until they were all grown up and settled in life. That was long before my own father and then Jon died and her brother inherited the title. They were poor. But she kept her promise anyway.

Merton reached his majority and the youngest sister married just two years ago. She is free of the obligation, but she is no longer young.

She has probably realized that if she does not marry soon she will have the unenviable life of a spinster for the rest of her days, and be rewarded for all she has done for her family by being eternally dependent upon them. I can see that she would be an easy prey to such as you.”

He spoke heatedly despite the fact that he was still half out of breath.

“Such as me?”Duncan raised his eyebrows.

“Mrs. Turner is dead,” Con said. “So is your father, Sherry, and your grandfather is an old man. You have come to town, I presume, in order to choose a bride.”

“And if I have chosen Miss Huxtable,”Duncan said, wrapping his towel about his shoulders and wiping his face with it, “it must be because I intend to
hurt
her?”

“Your notoriety itself will hurt her,” Con said. “Leave her alone, Sherry. Choose someone less vulnerable.”

“But if the story of how she presented me to Frost—or was it Fog or Dew?
Dew
! That was it. If the story has spread, Con, and obviously it has,”Duncan said, “will I not hurt her quite irreparably by withdrawing my offer now?”

Con gazed stormily at him. “Damn you, Sherry.” He scrubbed at his face and arms and chest with his towel and stalked off to retrieve his clothes. “Why did you have to choose Margaret of all people? If you marry her and hurt so much as a hair on her head, you will have me to answer to.
This
was nothing.” He jerked his head back in the direction of the ring. “This was mere sparring.”

“Are you going to White's by any chance?”Duncan asked. “If you are, I will walk with you.”

But going to White's brought him face-to-face with the Duke of Moreland, who had still been just Viscount Lyngate whenDuncan had last frequented town.

“Moreland.”Duncan nodded affably to him and the blond young man who was with him, and would have proceeded on his way to the reading room to look at the morning papers if the duke had not stood quite deliberately in his way.