Love Letters From a Duke (25 page)

Thatcher looked down at his now filled plate and sighed. So much for eating in peace. “My grandfather saw fit to betroth me to Miss Felicity Langley, the daughter of the late Baron Langley.”

His mother blew out a quick breath. “A baron’s daughter? You must be joking! Your grandfather would never be so plebian.” Lady Charles was the daughter of an earl, and considered anyone less than that beneath mention. “Besides, the Langleys? What nonsense! Such low sorts. Wasn’t he a clerk for the King?”

“A diplomat.”

Aunt Geneva added her opinion to the discussion, “Traveling about to God knows where. Bringing home all sorts
of foreign notions. Dear heavens, Lady Kingsmill went to Vienna with her husband and came back positively odd.”

He considered pointing out that he’d just spent the last ten years crisscrossing Portugal and Spain, but didn’t want to listen to the discourse that was sure to follow on the folly of those endeavors.

“So you have broken this entanglement, haven’t you?” Aunt Geneva pressed.

“No, I have not.”

“What?” both women said. They glanced at each other like wary cats, for the two sisters-in-law had never agreed on anything since the day Lord Charles had brought the former Lady Rosebel Redford home as his bride.

“But, Your Grace—”

“Aubrey, I must protest—”

“Enough!” he told them, sharply enough to set them both back in their seats. “This matter is mine and mine alone.”

After a few tense moments, his aunt ventured a new subject. “I have come up with a preliminary invitation list to the ball, and your mother was making some additions to it when you came in—”

“What ball?” he asked.

“The one for the evening after your investiture.”

“Oh, yes, excellent idea,” he said, before taking a hasty bite of ham. Well, if anything, this ball of Geneva’s could double as his marriage ball, but he wasn’t going to tell them that. Their surprise that night would be nothing compared to Felicity’s when she arrived and found him the host. He only hoped she didn’t make a habit of attending balls armed.

Then something else occurred to him. “Where is the list?”

“The what?” Lady Geneva asked.

“The list…” He waited a moment and then added, “…of the guests you intend to invite?”

“Whatever for?”

“Because it is my house, my money paying for all this,
and as such I will have a say in who you invite.”

The two ladies shared a glance that bordered on rebellion, but after a few moments Geneva nodded to Staines, who brought forward a stack of parchments. At first he brought them to her, but she shook her head and gestured toward Thatcher.

It didn’t take much of a glance for him to see that this ball was meant for only the finest families of the
ton
.

“Mrs. Browne and daughter?” he asked.

“Mrs. Browne is the Marquess of Saxby’s cousin and well thought of.”

“Her daughter is a pretentious nit, and not welcome in my home.” Shaking his head, he glanced over at Staines. “Bring me a pen and ink.”

“Whatever do you mean to do?” Aunt Geneva said, rising to her feet.

“Amend this list.”

Staines brought forward the necessary implements and Thatcher set to work. Drawing a thick line through the Brownes, he also eliminated Lord and Lady Gaythorne. Then he added some names to it.

“But Aubrey,” his mother protested, “you can’t just invite whoever you want.”

“I can and I will.”

His mother leaned over and looked at the names he’d just scratched onto the page. “Lord and Lady Stewart Hodges?”

“And all their daughters,” he added.

Aunt Geneva paled and then collapsed into her seat.

His mother stood her ground. “Stewie Hodges? Whatever are you thinking? He’s a veritable mushroom and his wife is the daughter of a coal merchant. We’ll have no peace all evening.”

Aunt Geneva’s nose wrinkled. “Why, his daughters haven’t even been granted vouchers to Almack’s—and after two Seasons, I might add—and you want
them
to grace
our
house?”

“Yes,” he told her. “But if the lack of vouchers is a problem, then get them some.”

“Get them…?” His mother’s mouth flapped impotently.

“Vouchers. Before the ball,” he repeated.

“We can’t just—” Aunt Geneva protested.

He glanced over at her, his brows arched, a look he remembered his grandfather used to great effect. It quelled Aunt Geneva, for the moment, but not his mother.

“Aubrey Michael Thomas Sterling, if you think I will go prostrate myself to Sally Jersey or Mrs. Drummond-Burrell, you are quite mistaken on the matter.” Lady Charles shook out her napkin as if that finished the matter. “I have no desire to go pandering after the patronesses of Almack’s like some
cit’s
wife in search of bargain silks.”

He glanced over at his aunt to see if this rebellion had spread.

His mother’s stubborn refusal must have given Aunt Geneva a bit of hope, for she shook her head as well. “Your Grace, you’ve been away for some time, and these matters are best left—”

“Vouchers for all of Stewie’s daughters or I will close the house on Bedford Square,” he said, quietly but firmly.

“My house!” his mother said. “You wouldn’t dare. Where would I live?”

“At Baxton Park with Aunt Geneva,” he replied, offering one of the duke’s minor properties. In Cumberland. About as far away from London as he could banish them without sending them to the hunting lodge in Scotland.

“I will not be tossed from my own house because I refuse to ruin myself socially,” Aunt Geneva said, defiance in every word, her Sterling blood boiling.

But Thatcher was Hollindrake now, the head of the Sterling family, and his word was law. Like it or not. “If these
arrangements aren’t satisfactory to you, Aunt Geneva, you can return to your husband.” He rose to his feet.
“Where you should be.”

She gasped, as did his mother.

“Vouchers, ladies. It should be a trifling thing for the two of you to do.” And then he strode from the room.

“Aubrey…I mean, Your Grace,” his mother said. “Where are you going?”

“I have obligations elsewhere.”

“You aren’t going back…there,” Aunt Geneva said, a note of protest and hesitation in her voice. “I forbid it!”

He shook his head. “Aunt Geneva, you needn’t get into such a lather. I’m not going over there.”

She heaved a sigh. “Thank God!”

Then he winked at his mother. “Not until I’ve changed.” Then he left the room, which had fallen into shocked silence.

Aunt Geneva fell back into her chair. “I told you,” she said. “He’s come back utterly mad! Whatever is to be done with him? He can’t seriously expect us to single-handedly raise up Stewie Hodges’s daughters like they are diamonds of the first waters. They are beyond the pale, and we will be as well if we do as he suggests.”

Lady Charles wasn’t listening, her gaze was fixed on the empty doorway and then down at the edited list.

“Rosebel! Are you listening to me?” Geneva heaved a sigh. “You must do something.”

She did. She began to laugh.

“Whatever is amusing about all this?” her sister-in-law asked. “Now it appears we will have to endure an afternoon of listing to Patience natter on about some nonsense if we are to gain those vouchers.”

But Lady Charles’s thoughts were hardly on an ill-spent hour in the company of Lady Jersey. “Did you see him?”

“See who?”

“Aubrey! I never would have thought it. Truly, I am beside myself.”

“Mad!” Aunt Geneva declared. “Completely mad!”

“Oh, no, not at all, Geneva, dear,” she said. “Did you hear him? Threaten to move us both into exile? And together, no less.” The lady heaved a sigh and positively beamed. “I thought he appeared quite ducal. In fact, I couldn’t be prouder.”

“Oh, heavens! There you are! You really should invest in a watch,” Felicity told Thatcher as he came through the door. She took a glance at the bracket clock behind her. “You’ll never keep a position if you don’t show up in a timely fashion.”

Since he had no intention of remaining a footman for much longer, he made a contrite bow. “My apologies, Miss Langley,” he said, looking around at the vast array of crates and trunks surrounding her. Simply gowned in a plain gray dress, her delightful red socks poked out from beneath the hem of her gown.

He looked at her this morning with a new understanding—for her letters to his grandfather had been revealing. In as much as his grandfather hadn’t been honest with Felicity,
he knew she hadn’t been all that forthright in her correspondence. She’d done her best to cast herself as the perfect duchess, but like her red socks, her wit, humor, and independent spirit had shown through. Like when she’d written:

Yes, there was no repressing Felicity’s opinions. He still couldn’t quite believe his grandfather’s choice, but he was more thankful every day that she wasn’t some Miss Browne.

He rather liked this irrepressible minx, in her red socks, and wielding (as she was right now) a pry bar. “Thinking of pawning the princess’s belongings?” he asked, looking over the collection of boxes he’d help unload the day before.

She let out an exasperated sigh, arms crossed over her chest, her toes tapping a staccato beat. “If they were her things, I would never have let them in.”

Thatcher laughed, as did Felicity, and for a time that tenuous thread wound around the two of them. She was studying him…well, looking at his mouth, and he wondered if she was seriously considering Jamilla’s advice from the afternoon before.

Let your Thatcher love you…

Demmit, if the little chit wasn’t considering that woman’s advice! And that meant if she was looking for a kiss, some experience, then she was still intent on marrying her mythical Hollindrake. Not that he didn’t understand her reasons. Between the lines of her letters he’d seen her very real need for security and respectability, at any price. Especially with a life spent being uprooted and tossed about as she and her sister followed their father to his various postings. Not to mention having a father who was nearly as notorious as the Prince Regent for his liaisons.

Yet how could she still want Hollindrake? Even after everything that Stewie had told her, or rather, warned her about. Flying in the face of Mudgett’s advice. Not caring a whit about the passionate kiss they’d shared the day before.

Perhaps putting his plan into action wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d hoped…

“Dare I ask what is all this?” he inquired, edging around a particularly large box, putting it between them.

“My mother’s things. They’ve been in the attics at Langley House forever, and I finally convinced the current tenants to send them to me. I was starting to think they’d never arrive.”

But Thatcher was still fixed on another statement. “Your father’s estate is leased?”

“Yes. Has been for ages. He always thought it impractical for the house to sit vacant. It’s been rented out for as long as I can remember.” Her fingers trailed over the top of a crate. “I’ve never even seen the place.”

Her wistful words reminded Thatcher of what she’d written about the rosebush and having a home in the country. That ache for roots, a place to bloom, he understood. He wouldn’t have all those years ago when he’d been a reckless youth, but he did now. After so many years of following the
drum, sleeping in tents, in sheds, and even under the stars when there was no other shelter. Of praying to live yet one more day in the midst of a hail of musket fire, the desire for a home he understood.

He itched to tell her that now, quite conveniently, he had seven residences, as well as a castle, and that wasn’t even counting the hunting lodge. She could have rose gardens at all of them if she so desired.

“Why aren’t Lady Philippa and Miss Thalia here to help?” he asked, looking at the monumental task before them. “I would think a treasure hunt would appeal to that pair.”

“You’d think,” Felicity said, eyeing one crate then another. “But they are in alt over their new play and not even the French army could rout them from their ‘art.’ They’ll be closeted away for the next week or so, at the very least. ‘The Lost Duke’! Such falderal.”

Thatcher flinched.
If they only knew…
“Don’t you think a duke could go about without people knowing who he is?”

She snorted. “I’d know!”

It was his turn to laugh. “You would? You mean to tell me that if Hollindrake came to your door, you’d know the man?”

“Of course,” she replied, shaking the pry bar at him like one would wag a finger. “He’d be the one in the Weston jacket, with a gilded carriage, a matched set of horses, and footmen in the blue and white livery.”

“Here, let me do that,” he said, catching up the rod in her hands. “Which one first?”

She shrugged. “Matters not. I haven’t the vaguest notion what is in any of these. I’m just hopeful there is something we can use.”

So he set to work opening the one closest to him. “Use? What do you need?”

“Haven’t you looked around,” she said, glancing around the empty foyer and nodding toward the empty study be
hind him. “There isn’t much in the way of furnishings in this house, or decorations. We can’t keep fobbing off our empty house as an oversight for much longer. People will start to suspect.”

He looked up from the crate. “I think they already do.”

“Exactly. So you can see why the contents of these boxes are so important. I’m hoping my mother had some silks or sateens tucked away that we could use to have some new gowns made up. The colors won’t be fashionable, but the right styles will keep most of the gossip at bay.” She nodded toward the crate, urging him to continue.

“Why don’t you apply to your solicitor?” he asked as he reset the bar and put his weight into it to get the lid off.

“Harrumph! Don’t think I haven’t,” she told him. “Mr. Elliott has a very frugal sense of budgets and even less regard for the necessity of a Season. He considers the pin money that father authorized in his last letter far too extravagant, but at least he can’t naysay that poor amount.” She eyed his work. “I think if you try that corner, you may get the lid off a little more easily.” Walking around the box, she tried to peer in, but still there was nothing as yet to see. “Truly, if Mr. Elliott had his way, we’d still be in Sussex.” She made a low growl. “Sussex, indeed!”

Thatcher shook his head. “What did Mr. Elliott say when you came to London?”

“Something about being headstrong lassies without much more sense than a bowl of oats. He’s of the opinion that once we run out of coal and food, we’ll go back. I’ll use his desk as kindling before I go back to Sussex.”

Thatcher laughed, but when he caught a glare of indignation from his employer, he stifled it as best he could.

“There is nothing to laugh about. I had thought if we came to London, he could hardly refuse us, but he’s a stubborn man and is steadfast against giving us anything beyond what we are allocated by Father’s instructions.”

“And this house? However could you afford such an address—even if it is empty?”

She winced. “Do you really want to know?”

“Yes, of course,” he said. In for a penny, out for a pound. But in truth he was more focused on getting this last nail to pop free, and even as he pressed all his weight against the bar, she made her confession.

“We aren’t really renting it, more like borrowing it without permission.”

The nail gave way with a great
pop
and the lid came flipping off. The bar flew next, and Thatcher went pitching head first onto the floor.

“You should be more careful,” Felicity told him, pointing at the floor. “I don’t want that marble chipped. Looks Italian.”

Thatcher propped himself up. How the devil did one borrow a house without the owner’s consent, unless they were…“You’re squatting in someone else’s house and you are worried about the floors?”

“Squatting? What an ugly word. Borrowing sounds so much more…”

“Proper?” he teased.

She brightened considerably. “Exactly.” Pulling at the straw, she burrowed into the crate and came up with a set of pall-mall mallets, followed by a large urn, and then another smaller box of carefully wrapped books. Taking a cue from Tally, she cursed in Russian. “This will never do. I need something to make costumes for the Duke of Setchfield’s ball.” Hands back on her hips, pry bar in hand, she attacked another crate.

But Thatcher was still stuck on the notion that they were living in a house that belonged to someone else—without the owner’s permission. He rose to his feet and marched over to where she was—and with some skill, he noted—wielding the metal bar on another hapless crate.

He reached over her shoulder and gingerly took it from her. “Whose house is this?”

“Does it matter?” she asked, trying to retrieve her bar, but to no avail. “Suffice it to say, the previous occupant is not going to show up, since he has gone aloft.” She tugged again at the bar. “Give that back.”

“Not until I get some answers,” he told her.

She let go and stepped back from him. “Sir, you no longer command a troop of men. You are my employee and if you don’t like the arrangements then you can leave.”

They stood face-to-face in stubborn silence, and finally Thatcher shrugged and walked toward the door.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

He paused and turned slightly toward her. “So you want me to stay?”

Her lips pursed together. “You can’t leave with my pry bar.”

Holding it up, he asked, “Is it yours or did you ‘borrow’ it?”

“That’s beside the point,” she told him, but that twinkle of amusement rose in her stubborn gaze. It was one of things he found intriguing about her. She could be fired with stubborn passion one moment and then when she realized her own folly, just as bemused as if the joke were on someone else.

“You wouldn’t leave me without any means to open all these crates, would you?” she asked, tipping her head just so and casting that look that always left him upended.

From the come-hither light in her eyes to the way her lips turned, as if they were just waiting for a kiss—and not just any chaste peck, but one that asked, no,
begged,
to be ravished.

“Don’t do that!” Now it was his turn to shake the bar at her.

“Do what?” Her eyes might be wide with innocence, but the light dancing in their blue depths was pure mischief.

“Look at me like that.” He groaned and went over and at
tacked the box closest to him. “Who the devil taught you that? Surely not your sainted Miss Emery, I have to imagine.”

“Oh, heavens no. Miss Emery would probably have put us to darning socks for the rest of our lives if she saw one of her students pulling such a face.” She cast another look in his direction. “Nanny Jamilla taught it to us.”

“Figures,” he muttered.

“Does it bother you?” she said, moving around the box, floating really, just like her courtesan mentor.

“Not…at…all,” he ground out as he sidestepped her and went to work on another box. “Now tell me how you came to ‘borrow’ this house, so I know who to watch for when they arrive at the door expecting Holland covers and the curtains drawn.”

She sighed. “If you insist—”

“I do,” he said, pry bar clenched in his hands.

“The house is part of a property dispute amongst heirs. I spotted the notice about it in a legal newspaper I found at Mr. Elliott’s office. Apparently when the former owner died it wasn’t quite clear who was to get the house—there is more than one will. While they continue to squabble over the details, it is ours to use.”

He suspected there was more to it than this simple explanation. It was far too proper to be the truth. “And who says it is yours to use?”

“I did,” Felicity told him. “Can’t you see how wasteful it would be to have a perfectly elegant house sitting empty during the Season? And I do intend to pay rent—to whoever ends up as the rightful owner—once I am—”

Married.

Thatcher closed his eyes. “Do I dare ask how you got into a house that isn’t rightfully yours?”

Felicity eased around the crate, her hands covering his as she helped him set the bar. Her fingers were cold and for a moment she left them atop his—and he might have
thought it was because his were warmer or that she was testing Jamilla’s advice, but when he looked down at her, he saw something different in her eyes.

That same awareness, that same disbelief that had lit her eyes the day before when he’d kissed her. The warmth moving between her fingers and his was more than just heat, it was a joining, for her hand felt right atop his—as if that was where it belonged.

And as he realized that, a spark moved between them. He edged closer to her, ready to forget that she was innocent, ready to forget that she considered herself promised to another.

Immediately wary, she plucked her hand away, breaking the spell. Then she nodded to him to continue his task. “Surely this box has something useful. Don’t you think?”

“It could,” he replied, straining to open it. But she still hadn’t answered his question. “However did you get inside this house if you hadn’t the keys?”

“Do you really want to know?”

Every time she asked him that question, he always regretted hearing the answer. But it was like rum to a sailor—he couldn’t resist listening to her runaway plans.

“Yes,” he said, waving his hand in permission. “Do tell.”