Captain Rakehell (15 page)

“Well, fetch them out,” Lesley ordered curtly. “I have need of them.”

This evening his mother was expecting him for supper, along with Amanda and Lord and Lady Hampton. In light of Welsey’s visit, it would be a most interesting meal. But an even more interesting dessert. Picturing Amanda in a maidenly night rail, opening her balcony doors to the man in the black mask, made Lesley’s pulse quicken with desire. And trepidation, for the look on her face when she beheld him would tell the tale.

The only bend in the branch was climbing the monstrous oak to reach the balcony. The thought made him queasy, but he withdrew his rapier from the scabbard hung on the back of a chair, took several practice cuts, and smiled. He always felt in top form and did his best thinking with a blade in his hand.

* * * *

For Andrew, it was driving that usually helped him sort things into their proper order, but he was still not at all sure what Lord Earnshaw had said to him when he returned to Hanover Square and Marie admitted him to Amanda’s bedchamber. There were several gowns wrapped in tissue on the counterpane and a row of shoes by the foot of the bed, but the portmanteaus were still empty.

“This doesn’t look terribly convincing, Mandy,” he observed as he sank into a chair near the balcony doors.

“Neither do you,” she replied, putting aside the hatbox she’d just taken down from a shelf in the clothespress. “What did the beast say?”

“Beast?” Andrew said, raising an eyebrow and placing his ankle onto an embroidered footstool. “Yesterday he was only a creature.”

“Andy,” Amanda said threateningly.

“Well.” He smiled thinly. “He didn’t say no.”

“But he didn’t say yes.”

“Truthfully, I’m not sure what he said, other than he was devastated.”

“Fustian!” She sniffed, and swept across the room to rummage through the items on her dressing table.

‘‘I believe him.’’

“It’s a Banbury tale!” Amanda declared, wheeling to face him with the blue velvet cushion that held her pins clenched in one fist. “You saw yourself—”

“I know.” Andrew held up one palm to silence her. “But if you’d seen his face when he said it, Mandy. He looked—run through.”

“I’d like to run him through!” Amanda jabbed a stay pin into the velvet sphere with such force it went through and stabbed her. “Ouch!” She popped her finger into her mouth and dropped the cushion.

It rolled across the floor and came to rest against the leg of Andrew’s chair. Frowning pensively, he leaned over to retrieve it and sat tossing it up and down.

“Why is he being so mulish?” Amanda fumed, sitting down at her table. “He doesn’t want me, he contrived that ridiculous fop charade to rid himself of me, so why won’t he step aside?”

“Perhaps he does want you,” Andrew suggested thoughtfully.

“Oh, yes,” she agreed, raising an ironic eyebrow, “what better reason to do everything he could think of to make me loathe him.”

“But what if he connived the charade thinking he didn’t want you,” Andrew said slowly, reasoning as he went along, “and then decided he did?”

“I think you sprained your brain as well as your ankle,” Amanda retorted and rose from the table. “If he had, why didn’t he simply say so?”

“I don’t know,” Andrew admitted, and yawned hugely.

“Exactly.” Crossing to his chair, she sat down on the arm and took the cushion away from him. “You’re worn thin, Andy. Better rest a bit and leave the thinking to me.”

“I can’t imagine a worse place to leave it,” he grumbled, the pain in his ankle making him cranky. “And you’re supposed to be packing for Hampton Hall.”

“I can do both,” Amanda assured him, and patted his shoulder soothingly.

She’d been doing both, in fact, since Lord Hampton had banished her to her room. There was a small case under the bed she’d been slipping things into when Marie’s back was turned, and a plan so mad taking shape in her head, it even frightened her.

“I suggest prayer in lieu of thought,” Andrew said, “for it will take the veriest miracle to save you from marriage to Lesley Earnshaw.”

At that moment, the miracle was descending his carriage in front of the Gilbertson house, blithely unaware that he was three days late for his brother’s welcome home ball.

Chapter Fourteen

The importance of the caller brought Randall himself up the stairs to Amanda’s bedchamber.

“M’lord,” he announced to Andrew when Marie opened the door. “‘Tis the Duke of Braxton. I told him his lordship isn’t in, and that you were indisposed, but he insists—”

“Oh, God’s teeth,” Andrew groaned, clutching the arms of his chair and easing his ankle gingerly to the floor. “The stairs again!”

“You simply can’t manage them,” Amanda said, her voice solicitous, but hope springing in her breast. “I’ll go down to receive Charles.”

“I shouldn’t let you.” He wasn’t at all fooled by his sister’s bland expression, but the throb in his ankle overcame his better judgment. What harm, he reasoned, could come from a cup of tea in the drawing room? “Should Mama and Papa return—”

“I’ll be up the stairs in a flash,” Amanda assured him. “And I can watch for them through the windows!”

Before Andrew could gainsay her, she was out the door, down the steps, and across the foyer. She let herself into the drawing room, hesitated for just a moment, then shut the doors behind her.

At the firm click of the latches, Charles Earnshaw turned away from the tall windows that faced the square. His hands were clasped behind him but sprang apart at the sight of Amanda, her face uncommonly flushed, standing with her back against the inlaid panels.

“Amanda, my dear! How delightful!” He started toward her with his hands outstretched, but came to an abrupt stop, a slight frown drawing his brows together. “Perhaps I’ve been rusticating too long, but shouldn’t you leave the doors ajar?”

In his travel-rumpled coat, plainly tied cravat, and unstylishly low shirt points, His Grace looked rusticated. His dark hair was tousled from his hanging out the carriage window testing the device he’d created to measure wind speed, and at the gutter, his four-in-hand stood steaming and blowing heavily from the experiment.

“There are matters afoot more important than propriety,” Amanda replied, hurrying across the room to clasp his wrists and gaze intently up into his face. “Andy said I needed a miracle, and here you are!”

“Well! I’m flattered!” The duke grinned, something he rarely did, for he was usually too deep in scholarly ruminations, and for a moment looked so like his brother Lesley that Amanda felt her breath catch. “I’ve been called many things, but never miraculous.”

“You are my dearest friend, Charles, and I’m in desperate need of one just now. Will you help me?”

“If I can, of course, though I can’t imagine how I—”

Amanda tugged him so abruptly down on a near-at-hand settee that the Duke of Braxton stumbled and all but fell onto it beside her. Drawing a deep breath, she announced, “I am betrothed to Lesley.”

“Are you? Then I wish you happy!” His Grace beamed at her. “Lesley who?”

“Charles.” Amanda spoke his name patiently. “Your
brother
Lesley.”

“No, really? Well, capital! We shall be able to correspond now without all that silliness of sending letters through Andrew. How is he, by the way? Randall said he was indisposed.”

“He’s only sprained his ankle. It’s why he didn’t come down. Now Charles—”

“I feel badly asking for him, then. I don’t usually insist, don’t like to, you know, though actually I called to see you. I thought Andrew could fix it, and I suppose he has, in an odd way. And now you tell me you’re to be my sister-in-law. How marvelous!” Charles paused and frowned puzzledly. “I wonder why Mother didn’t write it in the note she sent asking me to come up for Lesley’s welcome home ball? Hmmm.” He shrugged it off and brightened. “Will you announce your engagement then?”

Though she wanted to shriek at him, pressed as she was for time and a solution, Amanda restrained herself. When he wasn’t discoursing on science or literature, Charles had a tendency to ramble, and it was best, within reason, to let him do so.

“Lesley’s welcome home ball,” she told him simply, for it was the best way, “was three days ago.”

“I’ve missed it then! Drat!” He rapped his knuckles impatiently against his knee. “Did I miss the announcement of your engagement, as well?”

“It’s only been in the papers,” Amanda replied, taking his hands and holding them tightly in hers, “and it’s what I need your help with, Charles.”

“Oh, dear,” he said, flushing, and then frowning. “I’m no good with that sort of thing. Ask my mother.”

“Oh, Charles!” Amanda cried excitedly, gripping his hands so tightly he winced. “I knew your great mind would think of something! It’s perfectly brilliant! And after all, you are head of the family!”

“I am?” His Grace queried blankly. “Oh—yes, I am, I suppose. I keep forgetting that, you see, for it gives Mother such pleasure to believe she is. And, poor dear, she has so little else to do that I—”

“But she’ll listen to you, Charles,” Amanda interrupted, “for she is only a woman, and must bow to your wishes. As I must bow to Papa’s wishes. And don’t you see? If you forbid the match, then Her Grace—”

“Me?” he blurted. “Why on earth would I do that?”

“For me, Charles,” Amanda said, her fingers clinging imploringly to his.

“For you?” the duke repeated, looking bewildered. “You mean you don’t want to marry Lesley?”

“No, I do not.”

“Oh,” he said, looking crestfallen. “I thought, or rather, I hoped ... Are you sure? He’s something of a scamp, I know, and though I haven’t seen him since he’s come home, Mother wrote me the war has quite changed him and—oh, dear, Amanda, are you absolutely certain?”

“I am,” she replied firmly, seizing his comment, “for the war has quite changed him.”

“How do you mean?”

There wasn’t time for elaborate explanations, Amanda rationalized, and Captain Lord Lesley Earnshaw had no one but himself to thank for what she was about to say. Later, she could explain it all to Charles and make him understand.

“You do know he was wounded in Brussels?”

“Why, yes. Mother wrote me.”

“Did she tell you where he’d been wounded?”

“‘Twas Waterloo, I believe.”

“Yes, Charles. But not that where, the other where.”

“Not that where, but—Oh!” The duke flushed vermillion. “Er—no. Mother didn’t impart that. Nor did Lesley, as I recall, and one doesn’t ask.”

“This one did,” Amanda confessed, “when he came to take me driving and he sat upon a cushion in his curricle.”

“Well, you know, leather can be somewhat chill—”

“Yes, Charles, but last eve at Lady Cottingham’s, I overheard two ladies commiserating my betrothal to what was left of Eugenia Earnshaw’s son. ‘Twas a pity, they said, for Lesley quite reminded them of your father—before he went to war.”

“Before he went—” he repeated perplexedly, then suddenly blanched and sprang to his feet. “Good God! That’s what Mother meant! Have you told Lord Hampton?”

“Some of it, yes,” Amanda hedged, “but to no avail. Papa is determined to see me married.”

“But surely not to such a—er—my brother!”

Amanda nodded gravely.

“And my mother?”

“Her Grace is equally set on the marriage.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” he muttered, his eyes, which tended more to green than Lesley’s, narrowing with displeasure. “But this is monstrous! I shall forbid it!”

“Oh, thank you,” Amanda sighed gratefully.

“Hmmm, but wait. There may be a bit of a snag.”

“Charles, I haven’t time for a snag,” she urged, her gaze catching on the ormolu clock ticking on the mantle. “Papa and Mama could return at any moment. And I’m being sent to Hampton Hall first thing on the morrow.”

“Well, that’s it, then!” Charles exclaimed, a brilliant smile breaking over his features. “They can’t have a wedding without a bride!”

“Yes, Charles. I mean—no, Charles, but—”

“Here’s the thing.” He sat beside her again and clasped her fingers. “Believing as she does—rather, as I have allowed her to believe—that she is head of the family, I fear I could forbid till I turn blue and Mother will pay me no heed. So. What we must do is prove that
I
am the duke, a person to be reckoned with, and that you cannot be bullied about.”

“But how?”

“You’re being removed to Hampton Hall where you can be kept under watch, and if necessary, lock and key, are you not?”

“Yes. That’s Papa’s thought, I’m sure.”

“Well, then, removed you shall be,” he announced triumphantly, “but in my protection. And if necessary, under my lock and key, for I shall not return you until your father and my mother agree to call off the wedding!”

“Oh, Charles,” Amanda breathed admiringly, her vow to swear off plans and schemes abruptly forgotten, “you are a genius!”

“Yes, I know,” he agreed matter-of-factly, then went on consideringly, “My father’s hunting box should do nicely to hide you. Mother’s forgotten the place, I’m sure, and the caretaker’s wife will be there to act as chaperone. I shall have to hire a carriage, of course—mine could be recognized—I can do that this afternoon. No need to make any excuse to Mother, quite forgot to write her I was coming to town, you know. Hmmm ... Now, how to get you out of here?”

“Oh, that’s simple. I shall climb down the oak tree behind the house.”

“Splendid. Then I shall collect you at—say, eleven this evening? Will Lord and Lady Hampton have retired by then?”

“No, but they’ll be dining with Her Grace. I’m to be there as well, but under the circumstances, Papa may not let me attend.” Amanda smiled slyly. “Especially if I throw a tantrum.”

“Then be sure to throw one.” The duke slapped his hands on his knees. “Anything we’ve forgotten?”

She thought a minute, then shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Then I shall take my leave, for there’s much to do.”

Charles rose, assisted Amanda to her feet, and followed her from the drawing room to the foyer. He had no beaver to claim from Randall or a footman, for he believed the wearing of hats caused one’s hair to fall out. It was one of his less bizarre theories, but was nonetheless in large part the reason the fashion-conscious
ton
had dubbed him His Dottiness. He paused at the door with one hand on the knob to smile fondly at Amanda.