Beauty and the Duke (3 page)

“It warms the cockles of my heart to know you’ve na’ changed,
leannanan.
”

The gently spoken Gaelic endearment he’d once bestowed on her lifted her chin a notch. She vehemently disliked the familiar thrill that arced through her. “Do not presume to still know me, Lord Sedgwick.”

The faintest smile lifted the graceful curve of his
mouth. He had made no move to detain her. He didn’t have to. His very presence held her immobile in invisible arms of warmth. She had the uncomfortable impression he knew exactly the turmoil his presence was causing her.

“How have you been, Christine?”

“Very well.” She paused as her mind cast about for something more intelligent to say. “And you?”

He answered the same.

Ten years all summed up in two little words. It wasn’t even as if they had parted on poor terms. Not completely anyway. She had simply departed and vanished to another continent, and he had wed her cousin Charlotte.

But the fact that he was here, not only in her part of England but at the museum, was an infringement. “Why are you here at the Fossil Society gala?” she asked. “I cannot imagine that these people would interest you.”

“No, I imagine you cannot
imagine
any such thing. Becca has an interest in fossils. I am in London on business and so I thought to bring her. Darlington arranged for the introduction to your Lord Bingham. And so here I am.”

The corner of her mouth crooked slightly at the memory of Bingham having to surrender his seat of prominence at their table to Sedgwick. “
My
Lord Bingham is not used to being outranked or-flanked. He likes to think himself king even if it is only the Fossil Society he rules. Few remember it was Papa who founded the organization.”

After a pause, he said, “I was sorry to hear about your father’s passing.”

She studied Erik Boughton’s handsome face in the sconce light. The last time she had stood this close to him she had been deeply, irrevocably in love. “He
always liked you.”

Erik gave a humorless laugh. “Despite the fact no one else in your family did?”

“If Papa found fault with you it wasn’t because he believed you gave my cousin scarlet fever,” she said.

For a moment, Erik started to say something more.

With each heartbeat, Christine felt herself pulling back into her comfort zone where everything was safe and in its place. A place she could control. For the space of a few breaths, neither of them spoke. Then he asked, “What happened to you after you left England?”

“I spent seven years with Papa and later Mr. Darlington, going from dig to dig, from the Rhineland to South America, only to return to England and unearth our largest discovery ever, near Lyme Regis. It was either that or learn to play the pianoforte. I was never any good at playing the lady.” Normally she did not allow herself to blather and her impulsive words made her blush. She cleared her throat. “But that does not mean I do not have standards. I have the school’s reputation to think of, after all.”

“Obviously no student’s doting papa has seen you in that gown.”

She peered down at herself, pleased that he had not only noted what she wore, but also considered it provocative. She rarely had the opportunity to wear such a dress…and tonight was supposed to have been a special occasion. “What is wrong with this gown?”

“Nothing,” he said. “You put the highest-paid demirep to shame.” Leaning nearer, he said, “And I mean that as a compliment.”

Disdain for his humor flattened her smile. “Clearly you have developed the manners of a poet. A very poor one.”

“I never had manners of a poet. I thought that was
why I interested you.”

The triumphant end of a lively reel rattled the artifacts in the preview case. Silence followed, startling in its intensity, as if it signified more than the end to this evening’s festivities. Yet, neither of them hurried to be the first to say good-bye.

Then he stood aside for her to pass. But as she slipped past him, his hand snagged her arm, turning her. His tension was so great he might have been made of pressed iron. Aware of a sudden burn behind her eyes and his breath against her temple, she lifted her chin.

“I am glad to see you doing well, Christine.”

“You as well, your grace.”

His expression changed subtly, unmistakably.

Then she was walking past him into the fog that had settled over London like pea soup tonight. As she hailed a hansom and then leaned back against the aged, cracked leather seat in the cab, she drew in her breath, recognizing tonight had not gone well for her self-confidence, which was normally unflappable under the most dire of circumstances. Everything had seemed to escalate to more than it should have. Erik’s presence had only added to the burden of Joseph’s rejection for it reminded her of a far more painful time in her life when she had watched the man she’d once loved wed another.

She had met the infamous duke of Sedgwick her first Season in London at a ball given for her cousin Charlotte at the Somerset manse. That year had been the only time in her life when she’d contemplated trading her scientific passions for something…something elusively magic. She’d been young enough to feel her heart awaken to the first stirrings of love—or what she had believed was love. At eighteen, her world could not have
been brighter or filled with more promise.

Theirs had been a secret courtship, precipitated by her, ended by him, a fleeting interlude in her life that had managed to imprint itself on her memory with an impunity that had shaped her relationship with men in her life since.

Christine had always wondered in the deepest recesses of her mind if Erik had chosen her cousin Charlotte because he’d thought her more beautiful, less willful. Or because Charlotte’s dowry would add massive wealth to his holdings. The Sommers family had certainly misjudged the profitability of the land that came with Charlotte, just as they misjudged the young duke of Sedgwick. To this day, Charlotte’s father, Christine’s uncle, still contested the agreement that gave Sedgwick the York land in exchange for a mere two-week marriage to his daughter. Her uncle still harbored the hope that at the very least, Sedgwick would go to the gallows for the murder of his
second
wife, of less than a year, after
she
vanished. That had been seven years ago. Christine knew he’d had a daughter by his second wife.

Christine did not know if all the gossip about Erik was true. Through the years, she’d learned to dismiss the scandal rags.

But strangely…that night as she lay awake in bed staring at the plaster ceiling, instead of thinking about Joseph and Amelia on their way to Gretna Green and feeling sorry for herself, she was thinking about the man who had long ago introduced her to more than her first tempestuous kiss.

It bothered her that Erik was still as handsome, just as perilous as he had always been.

He had a little more silver at his temple. But she
doubted little else had changed. She would wager he was still prideful, stubborn, and determined to have the world served to him on his own terms. Now, after ten years, Erik Boughton, the devil Duke of Sedgwick, had returned to London, almost on her doorstep, and Christine found herself wondering why.

C
hristine awoke as the sunlight burned away the darkness and the birds commenced their happy chatter. Dozens of happy birds lived in the trees outside her window. Where was her cat when she needed him? No pillow over her head could snuff out the din of cheerful chirping.

With a groan, she finally turned and peered over her shoulder at the clock across the room. She kicked off the eiderdown. Not because it was time to be out of bed but because she had forgotten to wind the clock again. She was usually ever so sensible about such things. Punctuality was a virtue. She washed and dressed before her maid arrived, and hurried downstairs.

Great Auntie Sophie was already at the table, bent over the morning broadsheet, poring over every word in the society columns. No frivolous periodical, newspaper, or book in all London went unread in the Sommers household.

Lady Sophia was Christine’s paternal grandmother’s sister, and had been living at Sommershorn Abbey for as long as Christine remembered. She was a brilliant archeologist, the first in the family. Christine loved no one more, but she and Aunt Sophie could not be more different in character.

While Christine maintained a dutiful, sensible approach to life, her aunt smoked and drank and scandalized proper society at every opportunity. It wasn’t that Christine was an angel or had never lied, but Aunt Sophie never lost her fear of the fight and remained proud of her sedition. Even this morning, her rouged cheeks and scarlet gown shouted defiance.

“Good morning, Aunt Sophie.”

“Morning, dear.” Aunt Sophie spoke, looking up as Christine kissed the proffered withered cheek.

She walked to the breakfront and poured coffee from the silver service Mrs. Samuels set out every morning. “You look very bright this morning.”

“And you look as if you are attending a funeral. Who died
this
time?”

Christine stirred cream into her coffee. Other than the return of an old love and all her dreams passing into an ignoble demise, nothing in her life had changed from yesterday. “I am teaching classes this afternoon.”

“That explains the somber look. Try to be tolerant of them, dear. The girls at this school truly do look up to you. You are a wonderful mother figure to them.”

Aunt Sophie made her feel like a white-haired crone. She set down her spoon.

“
Why
are you teaching today?”

“Amelia and Mr. Darlington have left Sommershorn Abbey,” she said without turning. “They eloped.”

A tiny gasp came from Sophie’s throat. Little could shock Aunt Sophie. “Mr. Darlington and
Amelia
?”

“The museum appointed him to lead the expedition to Perth next month. He’ll be gone for years.” Christine slid her finger around the smooth cup rim. “Amelia will make him a good assistant.”

“Oh, my. Oh, dear.”

“This is an opportunity for Mr. Darlington.”

“What about the projects the two of you were working on together?”

“We have had no projects since his return from Edinburgh. With Papa gone, there is nothing I can offer him here at Sommershorn. The historical and archaeological societies denied every application I submitted. The museum was my last chance to prove I could undertake an expedition. They chose him.” She was thoughtful as she turned and sipped from her cup. “Do you ever regret not marrying and having children?”

“Regret is as useless as a three-wheeled cart on a bumpy road.
Never
go through your life regretting anything, dear.”

Sunlight spilled through the windows behind Lady Sophia and warmed the air. The green walls topped with classical frieze matched the room’s enormous fireplace and served as a background for the many antiquities the family had collected during years of traveling abroad. Christine always found as much comfort and inspiration in this room as she did in Sophie’s sage advice.

“I see Lord Sedgwick attended the gala,” Sophie said.

Christine stiffened. Aunt Sophie had to go and bring up the inevitable. “If you are wondering if we spoke, the answer is yes,” she replied, dumping another hefty spoonful of sugar into her coffee. “He attended with his sister.”

“His grace is courting the
ton
for another bride, who will give him an heir. They claim no proud papa is standing in line to wed his daughter to him.”

“Truly, Sophie,” Christine said quietly. “You are as bad as the rest. It is no wonder he chooses to remain in Scotland, the way people treat him here. Besides, he doesn’t need an heir. He has a daughter. Scottish law allows a daughter to inherit.”

“His duchy is an English patent, dear. Not Scots.”

“Oh.”

Aunt Sophie studied Christine, then returned her attention to the paper. She chuckled. “Your uncle must be apoplectic. My sister’s side of the family never did have the sense of an acorn, which is why they are now poor.”

Christine carried her cup to the window and stared outside at the azaleas. This was not a conversation she wanted to have. “C. A. Sommers won the Fossil Society’s award last night,” she said after a moment, changing the topic.

“I never doubted that outcome for a moment,” Sophie said.

Christine turned. “I wish you could have been there.”

Sophie looked up, her blue eyes blinking. “What would I do at a function where I would be required to be nice to those bloodsucking windbags you want to impress? You had Amelia and Mr. Darlington to accompany you. I’m just sorry Bingham, the old blatherskite, chose him over you to lead the Perth expedition. Joseph was always a better geologist than a paleontologist.”

Christine pulled out the chair next to Sophie’s and sat. “Oh, Sophie.” Passion infused her voice. “What I wouldn’t give to make an earth-shattering discovery. A discovery so magnificent…” Setting her coffee cup on the table, she focused on Aunt Sophie’s kind face. “The entire world would be forced to admit that what I have to offer is important.”

“Is that what is truly bothering you, dear?”

Of course it was. Didn’t Sophie understand her better than anyone? “I want to be like you, Sophie. Free of the
ton’
s prying eyes and suffocating rules. I want to seize the moment. I want to be taken seriously.”

Sophie patted Christine’s hand. “One day, you will show every stodgy scholar in Britain a thing or two about the female intellect, dear. But you must carefully plan and be patient about these things. Something always comes up, and when it does,
then
you seize the moment.”

“Patience.” Christine sat back in her chair. “How can I be patient when the entire world is passing me by?
I
should be the one going to Perth.”

“But you are not, dear. The museum trustees did not choose you. Mr. Darlington did not choose you.”

Christine picked up a folded serviette from the table, snapped it open and dabbed the corner of each eye. “This house will not be the same without Amelia. I shall miss her laughter most, I think.”

“If it is any consolation, I am still here,” Sophie pointed out.

“Thank you, Aunt Sophie. You have always been dependable in that way.” She smiled. “Perhaps we could spend more time together now that Amelia isn’t here.”

A knock on the front door signaled an end to their
tête-à-tête
. Sophie patted Christine’s cheek. “That would be wonderful, dear. We can share a spot of tea later this week.”

A footman entered the dining room and announced that Lady Bosworth’s carriage and party had arrived.

“I am off to the races, dear.”

“I thought you didn’t like Lady Bosworth.”

“Pish-posh.” Aunt Sophie tugged on her gloves. “That was yesterday. She has apologized for whatever it was she did that caused the tiff. At my age, it is never wise to hold grudges for too long. You will understand soon enough, dear.”

Aunt Sophie hurried out of the room, leaving Christine alone with her thoughts and listening as the horses
and carriage pulled away from the drive. At sixty-eight, Aunt Sophie showed a remarkable lack of regret for any of the choices she had made in life. She was who she was and to the devil with anyone who found exception to her character.

Her cat meowed at her feet. Christine looked down. Beast, her fat tabby, rubbed against her legs. She lifted the large tomcat onto her lap. He began to purr against her hand, his front paws kneading her arm. She’d found him years ago, after the poor thing had been run over by a beer wagon, and she had nursed him back to health. He had one golden eye and parts of his body were missing fur, but to her, he was a beautiful cat.

Nuzzling his head, she picked a piece of cheese off Aunt Sophie’s plate and rewarded him for his affection. “You know who loves you best, don’t you?” she cooed.

But after a while Beast abandoned her for the outdoors, where an abundance of mice awaited the patient hunter and he could be king of his world.

Christine made her way through the empty and hallowed corridor of the school where the young women who attended learned about something more than manners, etiquette, and needlepoint. Many of the students here were younger daughters of genteel landowners, bereft of the needed dowry to marry well. They would never see a Season in London. But for most of the sixteen girls enrolled at Sommershorn Abbey and for the three teachers, former students who spent the year living among the girls, the experience this school provided gave them the means to better their lives.

Christine picked up her pace and felt a pin drop from her tightly wound chignon. It fell to the wooden floor with a soft click, but she couldn’t stop to find where it had fallen. Already she was late.

She paused outside the classroom. It would not do to allow the girls to see her harried, especially when she preached the importance of self-respect and control. She opened the door. The girls were congregating around the desk, clearly not expecting to see Christine. They straightened guiltily, their excited chatter coming to an abrupt end as if someone had doused them with ice water. Each of them scattered to take her place behind her wooden desk.

“Miss Amelia has left us,” Christine explained when she had their attention again. She walked across the room to stand behind Amelia’s disorganized desk. “I will be taking over her classes until the end of the session this week.”

The girls looked at each other and giggled. Dolly, a lanky seventeen-year-old with a mop of red curls spoke first. “Did she and Mr. Darlington really elope?”

Startled, Christine looked at the girls, their expressions intent as they awaited her reply. “Did Miss Amelia inform you of her plans?”

The girls grew more excited and animated. “Not in so many words, Miss Christine,” Dolly replied, clearly the class spokesperson. She was the oldest.

“It’s the magic ring what done it,” the school’s newest acquisition blurted. Babs was the fifteen-year-old granddaughter of Aunt Sophia’s whist partner.

“Two months ago she made a wish that Mr. Darlington would marry her,” another girl replied to a chorus of animated gibberish.

“ ’Tis true, Miss Christine,” Dolly said with heartfelt passion.

“What is true?”

Dolly stepped forward. “This morning we found the ring on her desk. It must have finally come off her
finger yesterday. The ring is truly magic. She wanted to wed Mr. Darlington. And now she is wed.”

Christine held out her hand. Dolly dutifully dropped a band of silver into her palm. Christine had in fact seen this ring on Amelia’s hand.

“There is no such thing as magic.”

“But there is, Miss Christine,” Dolly insisted. “Miss Amelia proved it. She wanted Mr. Darlington to fall in love with her and he did.”

Christine took a seat at the desk and peered sternly over the rim of her spectacles at each of the girls. “Have you considered that he fell in love with her because she was worthy of his affection?”

From the blank response on their young faces, they had not considered the possibility. Christine turned the ring into the light, noting an odd Celtic inscription carved within the band.
Chance not. Win not
. The ring itself was made of braided antique silver laced with something black.

“Where did she get this?”

“Lady Sophia gave it to Babs last year and said it was a special ring just for special girls,” Dolly said. “If a person puts it on then what she wants most in the world will make itself known
all
within five minutes. Babs really wanted to come to this school. When she put the ring on, she asked her papa if she could attend Sommershorn Abbey this year and he said yes. Isn’t that so, Babs?”

The girl in question nodded vigorously. Christine shook her head and tried not to make light of the girl’s supposed miracle.

“Oh, but ’tis true. He’d been adamantly against the school, Miss Christine,” Dolly insisted. “Only when Babs came here did the ring come off. Then six months ago, Sally put on the ring. Didn’t you, Sal?”

The young blond girl in a black-and-white pinafore beside her nodded. “Papa was going to betroth me to that lecherous Viscount Alton. A letter arrived calling me home. But when I arrived, Lord Alton had run off with my older sister. Then Miss Amelia put on the ring. We were in your office upstairs, standing beside your desk when Mr. Darlington arrived just then, back from Edinburgh. He’d come to see you, but when he glimpsed Miss Amelia”—Dolly clutched her fist to her chest—“we all knew it was she he would pick.”

For a moment, the words almost made Christine look away. Of course, Joseph had come to Christine’s office first. But she had been in the “dead room” that day cleaning up a fossil. She looked at her young protégés. “This is exactly the kind of balderdash that gives women a bad name.”

Dolly lifted her chin. “You are always about facts and truths, Miss Christine. What if something else does exist that cannot be explained by physical evidence? Isn’t it our responsibility to explore these possibilities as well? What if we want to believe in something more?”

Christine looked at the girls and felt a strange kinship to each of them. All of them in some way stood outside society. “You cannot wish your problems away,” she quietly said. “Your destiny is not inscribed in the stars. There is no such thing as magic or fairy tales…or curses…or mystical phenomenon. This is only a ring.”