My American Duchess (14 page)

Mrs. Bennett’s dinner party

M
erry and Bess walked into Mrs. Bennett’s drawing room that evening to find it already populated with philanthropic gentlemen and ladies. Footmen moved among the guests, offering drinks on silver trays.

Lady Caroline was posing in the center of the room, though no one stood near her. She had the air of a Greek goddess who finds herself unexpectedly without acolytes.

“Look at that,” Bess muttered. “Englishmen are not as foolish as one might take them to be. They’d rather talk to each other than suffer that woman’s lisp.”

“She is quite attractive,” Merry replied, keeping in mind her vow to be a better person.

“What does she attract? Pond life? There’s your Cedric.”
Aunt Bess nodded toward a man at the far end of the room with his back to them.

“No, that’s the duke,” Merry replied, without hesitation. His Grace was notably sturdier than his twin; the duke’s shoulders had to be a third again as broad as Cedric’s. In fact, he was bigger from head to toe.

“I do love pantaloons,” Aunt Bess murmured, as the Duke of Trent turned around, revealing gray silk stretched over powerful thighs.

Other male guests wore embroidered coats in a dizzying array of colors, but the duke’s black coat wasn’t even fashionably tight. It looked as if he could shrug into it without help from a valet.

Merry bit back a smile thinking of the battles Cedric must wage with his brother over sartorial matters. Her fiancé took the art of dressing very seriously.

The duke, on the other hand, couldn’t have done more to make it clear that he was uninterested in the whole business. These days, most younger men didn’t powder their hair, but they used pomade to coax it into waves approximating a wig’s curls. Not His Grace, whose tousled hair showed no signs of a valet’s hand.

Catching her glance, he raised an eyebrow by way of greeting.

Raised a dark, sardonic eyebrow, and then turned back to his conversation.

“Not polite,” Bess said with a sniff. “He can be charming if he wishes, but he doesn’t act like a duke, for all Mrs. Bennett looked as happy as a boa eating a goat.”

Their hostess had not endeared herself to Bess when she greeted them with the whispered information that they would find a duke
and
a duke’s daughter in her drawing room. “Very shabby genteel to boast about one’s guests,” Bess added.

“Hush,” Merry said, declining a glass of lemonade. She was determined to be fashionable in every respect.

Her aunt ignored that. “All this fawning has led to His Grace thinking he’s the cock of the walk.”

“Please don’t use that word in public, Aunt,” Merry said, through gritted teeth.

“You’re turning into a regular Puritan,” her aunt retorted, taking a sip from her glass. “For goodness’ sake, Mrs. Bennett’s cook must have used one lemon for the entire punch-bowl. As watery as Communion wine. Oh, there’s Mrs. Avedon. I must compliment her on her elegy to a dead rabbit.”

“A dead rabbit?”

“Quite heartbreaking and difficult: a hundred lines, all in rhymed couplets. What rhymes with ‘rabbit,’ after all?”

Merry sighed and went over to greet Lady Caroline. “I hope you are quite well?” she asked, dropping a deep curtsy that acknowledged the lady’s lineage. She positioned herself with her back to the duke, facing the door leading to the entrance hall. Surely Cedric would appear any moment.

Lady Caroline greeted her with a smirk and a bob of her knees. “I cannot complain.” Her accent, in combination with a slight lisp, made her sound like a parrot that’d been trained to talk. “Cannot” turned to a high-pitched “cawnawt.”

“Your gown is lovely,” Merry observed, unable to think of anything else to say. “I am partial to whitework embroidery.”

“I wear only white,” Lady Caroline remarked. She lowered her voice and added, “In England, it is seen as a mark of one’s station; in fact, my mother turned away her maid for wearing a white gown.”

“That seems unfair, considering that gentlemen are free to dress like peacocks,” Merry said.

“A lady must be particularly careful to avoid vulgar display.”

Her pointed glance suggested that wearing pearls on one’s sleeves constituted just such a vulgar display.

“I am glad that we Bostonians do not adhere to the same precepts,” Merry said with a smile. “White is so difficult to wear, as it makes my skin look sallow. Though not yours, of course.”

The footman came around again. “Juice is ruinous for the waistline,” Lady Caroline declared. “I shall take a glass but I won’t allow even a drop to touch my lips.”

Merry promptly changed her mind and accepted a lemonade. At least drinking it would give her something to do.

“You do see that your future brother-in-law is in attendance, don’t you?” Lady Caroline whispered. “Such a shame that the duke didn’t deign to greet you, but, well, one cawn’t blame him, cawn one?”

“One cawn,” Merry said, unable to stop herself.

Lady Caroline didn’t notice. “His Grace rarely attends society events, but my father has long intended to promote a match between our houses. Imagine, Miss Pelford, that would make us sisters.”

She didn’t summon up a smile at that thought, and neither did Merry.

“A consummation devoutly to be wished.” The deep voice came from behind Merry.

Really?

Did everyone in London deem it necessary to fling around big words?

Lady Caroline smiled lavishly. “Your Grace!”

Merry turned. The duke was bowing, so she curtsied in reply, taking care not to spill her lemonade.

“That wasn’t very graceful,” Lady Caroline said with a giggle. “You look like a chambermaid caught in the hallway with a pile of sheets. Not that I mean to imply the least similarity.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Merry agreed. “Your Grace, might I ask you to translate your greeting for me? What is a ‘consummation’?”

His eyebrows rose again, and Merry felt her cheeks turning hot as she suddenly remembered that consummations were the natural consequence of weddings.

Lady Caroline tittered and flipped open her fan. “Really, Miss Pelford! Your plain-speaking American ways are disquieting to those of us accustomed to a more circumspect manner of speech.”

“It was not I who raised the subject,” Merry said, giving the duke a hard look.

“I was quoting
Hamlet
,” he said apologetically.

Was it a requirement of British subjects that they commit to memory the entirety of the Bard’s work? Lady Caroline launched into a speech about how she so, so loved Shakespeare’s plays while Merry puzzled over the duke’s quotation.

Could he really have meant that it would be a good thing if she and Lady Caroline became sisters-in-law? That implied he intended to marry the lady. Her heart sank. When she and Cedric married, Lady Caroline would presumably become part of her circle of acquaintances, but it would be awful if she became part of the family.

Lady Caroline had started twittering on about how the weather cawn’t have been better at some house party she’d been to—which allowed her to emphasize the circles to which Merry had no entrée.

“You really should have gone, Your Grace!” she cried. “I cawn’t tell you how lovely it was, so, so comfortable because it was all people like ourselves, if you take my meaning.”

A grin tugged at the corner of the duke’s lips, which was a very good look for him. He did not appear to be regarding Lady Caroline with anything resembling roman
tic fervor. But if Merry was interpreting his Shakespeare quote correctly, he had to be considering marriage to her.

Unless he had rattled off the line without thinking about it.

“‘Devoutly to be wished’?” she mouthed, nodding toward Caroline. “
Sisters?
”

Merry watched as that sank in. His jaw tightened. Apparently, he hadn’t considered that she and Caroline could only become as close as sisters through a marriage that involved himself.

She grinned. “‘A consummation devoutly to be wished,’” she mused, taking advantage of a momentary pause in Lady Caroline’s monologue. “You
do
grasp the import of His Grace’s quotation, don’t you, Lady Caroline?”

“I certainly do.” The lady sniffed. “Shakespeare’s immortal words run through the veins of every English subject. Even more so in my case, since those plays were written by one of my distant relatives. Everyone knows that the Earl of Essex was the real author of the plays.”

The duke was glowering at Merry, likely because he was afraid she would explain the whole “consummation” business—which Lady Caroline would instantly translate into a proposal.

If the duke were wearing a ring, she’d probably rip it right off his finger and put it on her own.

“Shakespeare was
not
the Earl of Essex,” the duke stated.

Oh dear me. His Grace was feeling a little irritable.

Merry beamed, letting her eyes reveal how much she enjoyed having him in her power. “We Americans are woefully ignorant. All I remember is that my governess said Shakespeare was a glover’s son. And wasn’t there something about how his father was fined for having a dunghill outside his house?”

She and Miss Fairfax had toiled through
Romeo and
Juliet
, after which Merry had relegated drama to the same category as wax flowers; to wit, best avoided.

Lady Caroline sighed gustily. “Really, Miss Pelford, I must ask you to refrain from talk of dunghills. I gather that all sorts of vulgarity are acceptable in the Colonies, but not here.”

The Colonies? The war had ended twenty years ago, for goodness’ sake.

“During his lifetime, everyone in London knew Shakespeare,” the duke said. “They saw him writing in pubs, and they talked about him.”

Lady Caroline was clearly torn between offending an eligible duke and burnishing her claim to Bardian blood. Nature prevailed over policy. “No man of low blood could have written such immortal lines,” she pronounced. “Why, you might as well say that he was—” She stopped.

“That he was American?” Merry suggested. She tapped her chin with her finger. “Why didn’t I think of that? Perhaps I, too, am descended from the Bard!”

She took a sip of her lemonade, which might as well have been plain water, just as Bess had said.

“Is that canary wine?” the duke asked, rather grimly.

“Canary wine?” Lady Caroline repeated, mystified.

Merry gave the duke a wry grin. “Do you think me Cherry Merry, Your Grace?”

“Cherry Merry?” Lady Caroline echoed, sounding more like a parrot every moment.

“Drunk,” Merry explained. “When I was little, people would tease me if I stumbled, calling me Cherry Merry.”

Lady Caroline sniffed and turned up her nose. “I am happy to say that no one has
ever
entertained the idea that I might be fuddled by alcohol.”

I
t wasn’t Trent’s business if Merry Pelford was as drunk as a lord, which she clearly was not. But then she gave him that smile again, the one that sent lust roaring down his legs—and there
was
something a bit inebriated about it. Damn it.

He snatched the glass from her hand and took a swig, not because he truly believed his future sister-in-law was addicted to the grape, but because—well, because he wanted to see her mouth open with surprise and her eyes widen.

He was as capable of a spontaneous gesture as the next man.

“I had no idea you were so thirsty,” Lady Caroline cried. “You must have my glass as well, Your Grace. I assure you that my lips have not touched the rim.”

That was when he realized that his real motive was that Merry’s lips
had
touched the rim.

Just now she pursed her lips to blow a stray ringlet out of her eyes, and he had to choke back a growl because of what happened to his body at the vision.

“I’ll take my empty glass back so that you can drink more of this refreshing beverage,” Merry said cheerfully.

She was being purely devilish, because the lemonade tasted like dishwater, but there was no help for it. He took Lady Caroline’s glass and drained that as well.

“Your Grace?” Lady Caroline began.

She had an odd lisp. Trent arranged his face into an approximation of a smile. “Yes?”

“You must be so, so thrilled that Miss Pelford has consented to marry your brother.”

“I am, I am,” Trent agreed.

He was interested to see Merry’s smile vanish.

“Generally speaking, those of our rank don’t see many love matches,” Lady Caroline went on. “But it has been so, so romantic to watch Lord Cedric win Miss Pelford’s heart and hand.”

“Indeed,” Trent responded.

“The third time is the charm!” Lady Caroline said brightly, managing to insinuate all sorts of things with one short sentence.

Merry’s eyes rested thoughtfully on the lady for a moment, and then she said, “In truth, I erred in my first two choices. I find that men are like walnuts: you never know if there’s anything rotten inside until they’re cracked.”

God, she was magnificent.

“Whereas I think that marriage is like religion or medicine,” Trent countered, handing Lady Caroline’s empty glass to a footman, then taking Merry’s and giving that over as well. “All three have to be taken on blind faith.”

Lady Caroline’s head swiveled between them. She must have been taught that charm meant perpetual smiling.

“You have been neither married nor betrothed, am I right, Your Grace?” Merry asked, as her eyes met his over the fan she had just unfurled.

“That is correct,” he allowed. That errant ringlet had fallen over her forehead again. She had so much hair that a man instinctively pictured it spread across a pillow.

No.

What was he thinking? Sister-in-law.

Sister-in-law
.

It was time to change the subject. “Why on earth hasn’t my brother arrived yet?”

Lady Caroline looked around with an unmistakably eager flutter of her lashes. It could be that Cedric had indeed undersold himself. Perhaps he could have married a duke’s daughter.

“His carriage may be snarled in a crowded street,” Merry said, fiddling with a circlet of pearls and diamonds at her wrist.

For God’s sake, how rich was the woman? Not that he cared, except as regarded her ability to support Cedric. If he were marrying her, he’d make her put her money in a trust for their children.

He would support his own wife.

He shouldn’t be thinking along those lines.

Nor should he be looking at the contours of Merry’s body. She would tempt an archbishop, though. She couldn’t be wearing stays; her gown was designed so that the slightest touch would have pushed her bodice below her breasts.

It was clear to everyone that her breasts were round and high, as if they naturally presented themselves for kisses. For adoration.

“If marriage is indeed like religion, I think it will be a paradise,” Lady Caroline chirped.

Trent and Merry turned to her at the same moment.

“How very quixotic of you,” Merry said.

“In fact, I believe that romance is possible in daily life,” Lady Caroline breathed, her eyes roaming over Trent’s face and straying down his neck and arms.

Perhaps Cedric did not have a chance.

“For those of our station, marriage is, of course, a matter of bloodlines and family connections,” the lady continued. “Yet love is certainly possible within the bounds of that agreement. In fact, I think that marriages amongst ourselves are far more likely to flourish than amongst servants, whose pairings are the result of animal instincts.”

Merry seemed to be grinding her teeth. Interesting.

“Don’t you agree with my broader point about marriage, Your Grace?” Lady Caroline asked.

“To some extent,” he said, thinking of the romantic streak that Merry thought she saw in Cedric. “I believe that a man and woman are far more likely to live in harmony if emotion plays no role in the choice of spouse. On either side.”

He glanced down to find that Lady Caroline had laid her hand on his sleeve.

“It is such a pleasure to realize how much we are in agreement, Your Grace. You are so wise in comparison to us two foolish women.”

Merry’s jaw tightened again.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that you are foolish, precisely,” Trent said, baiting the tiger.

“How kind of you,” Merry said. “I imagine we only seem so in contrast to your wisdom.”

Lady Caroline’s lashes fluttered some more. She took her hand from his sleeve about a second before he was going to shake himself free.

“Does love have no place, then, in those marriages you deem successful?” Merry inquired.

A little stir reached them from the other end of the room, and Trent knew without turning to look that his brother had finally arrived. Cedric never slipped into a room. He issued salutations and compliments the way a priest doles out Communion wafers. Everyone lined up, and everyone was blessed.

Interestingly enough, Merry’s eyes didn’t shift from Trent’s face, though Lady Caroline was leaning sideways to see around Trent’s shoulder.

“I am firmly of the opinion that it does not. I haven’t experienced the emotion and I shouldn’t care to.”

“One needn’t have love for a marriage to be successful,” Lady Caroline agreed, smiling at him so lavishly that he could see her upper gums. She had been listening, then, even if she had been gawking at Cedric.

“What do
you
think of love and marriage, Miss Pelford?” Trent asked, in the brief interlude before Cedric, who was making his way down the room, came within earshot.

“How can you ask me that when I am betrothed to your brother?” she asked. Her words may have been playful, but her eyes were not.

“I am inquiring in the abstract,” he said, “with no reference to the particulars. I am aware that yours is a love match.”

“In the abstract, then,” she replied, “I would worry that a marriage arranged purely on the grounds of suitable lineages and property contracts would be like the circus: very gay and shiny on the outside.”

“And on the inside?”

“Prosaic at the best, and torture at worst. At least, from the point of view of the animals forced to dance for their dinner.”

Cedric had reached them and was bowing so deeply that
his chin nearly touched his knee. Trent found himself staring blankly at his brother’s hand tracing flourishes as he bowed.

Miss Merry Pelford had a steel backbone. She would survive marriage with his brother, for all of Cedric’s flaws. If anyone could save Cedric, it would be Merry.

But, for the first time, he thought about what that marriage would be like for her.

What kind of marriage would it be? Once a bear is trained to dance for his dinner, what does he think of his trainer?

That might have been the question in her eyes, but perhaps it was only wishful thinking on his part.

“Your Grace,” Lady Caroline said, her hand on his sleeve again. “Mrs. Bennett has signaled that we should remove to the dining room.”

Sure enough, their hostess was trilling something about how formal processions by rank were fusty and old-fashioned, and they should all proceed at their leisure.

“Yes, of course,” Trent said. Mrs. Bennett had claimed Cedric; they were walking from the room together, his head close to hers.

Lady Caroline’s hand tightened on his arm. “I am sure neither of us considers such rules passé.”

Trent didn’t give a damn who reached the dining room first. He didn’t respond, just began towing her to the door.

“I trust that you are not worried that your brother will be left at the altar, Your Grace,” the lady said, changing the subject. For whatever reason, she had decided to mount a campaign against Merry.

“That is for Cedric to worry about, not me,” Trent pointed out.

“But, Your Grace, you do realize that Miss Pelford is betrothed for the
third
time?”

Trent shrugged.

Merry had taken Kestril’s arm. He was a decent fellow, though young and—now Trent thought of it—fairly dim. His lands ran along the western border of Trent’s country seat, and they’d always maintained an amicable relationship.

Even so, the way Kestril was looking at Merry made Trent’s eyes narrow.

If she were his fiancée, he would never allow her to sit at a different part of the table. Hell, he wouldn’t like it if she smiled at another man the way she was smiling at Kestril.

He might become shameless, holding her hand in public. Kissing her in public. Worse, even.

In carriages.

Trent suited his stride to Lady Caroline’s mincing steps while he deliberately allowed the devil to tempt him. Between a gap in the couples ahead of them he could just see Merry’s back.

Back?

Who cared about backs?

He did. It turned out that he cared about necks as well, because her hair was swept up and then fastened to the side in ringlets that bared her neck. It was a delectable neck. A kissable neck.

Below that was a sweep of creamy back, and then below that, a rump as rounded and perfect as he’d ever seen.

“Do you agree, Your Grace?” Lady Caroline asked.

He had no idea what she had asked him. Glancing down at her, he saw her eyes were eager. He hedged. “I expect so.”

“Your brother is so, so beneficent and altruistic.”

He murmured something.

“You can even see it in his choice of bride,” she said, with a touch of malice.

Trent looked up just in time to see Merry smiling at
Kestril and then slipping away down the hallway, likely heading toward the ladies’ retiring room. Sure enough, as they reached the door to the dining room, he caught sight of her gown’s floating hem disappearing up the stairs.

He drew Lady Caroline into the room, started automatically for the head of the table, and paused. As the highest-ranking gentleman and the highest-ranking lady, the two of them would ordinarily be seated close to their hostess.

As with most time-honored conventions, there was rhyme and reason behind the rule of precedence regarding entry to the dining room: to wit, it dictated the order of seating down the table.

Mrs. Bennett’s dismissal of the usual order of things had resulted in guests’ seating themselves hirdy-girdy. Cedric had seated himself in the place that, strictly speaking, should have been occupied by the highest-ranking gentleman in the room: himself. The empty seat next to Cedric would do for Lady Caroline.

The only other unclaimed seats were toward the opposite end of the table—beneath the salt, as the old saying went. For a second he entertained the idea of escorting Lady Caroline to one of them, just to see her outraged expression.

Mrs. Bennett hopped to her feet. “Oh no,” she cried, recognizing the problem too late.

“That’s quite all right,” Trent said cheerfully, depositing Lady Caroline next to Cedric with no further ado. “Precedence is out of mode, as you say, and I’m happy to sit wherever there’s a free place. If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I shall return directly.”

He tried not to exhibit undue haste as he made his way from the room. The butler started toward him, but Trent waved him aside.

What the hell was he doing?

He climbed the stairs, cursing himself. He was following Merry Pelford like a damned lapdog.

As he reached the top he had a moment of clarity. He was following her because, of everyone in London, Merry met his eyes squarely and didn’t look away. She didn’t cringe or fawn.

In fact, she was downright disrespectful. She lived in a universe where men were not adulated simply owing to an accident of birth.

No one he’d ever met had looked at him and seen anything other than his duchy, like a medal on a heavy gold chain, determining his every interaction. Even Cedric saw only the title that had been snatched from him by an accident of birth, not the twin brother who stood before him.

He turned the corner at the top of the stairs and there she was, just closing a door behind her. She had rubbed a dark rose color on her lips.

She didn’t need it. On the other hand, it made her look naughty . . . and absurdly enticing.

“Your Grace,” she said, her voice clear as a bell in comparison to Lady Caroline’s. Merry’s thick black lashes framed eyes that seemed as changeable as the weather. You could see emotions going straight through them. Right now, she was surprised.

He’d be damned if she was in love with his brother, as she claimed to be.

“I wanted to thank you privately for not informing Lady Caroline about the consummation that I certainly do not wish for,” he said, walking toward her. “I spoke carelessly.”

“Trying to be witty by spouting quotations,” she said, grinning at him. “Tut, tut, Duke. Your pretension could have had grave consequences.”

“More than grave,” he said truthfully. “Lethal.”

Her eyes crinkled. Since when did crinkling eyes send a bolt of desire through a man’s body?

“I am so sick of Shakespeare,” she confided. “To be honest, I wish the man had never written a line. I’m starting to hate him.”