Never a Gentleman (25 page)

Grace stood there for the longest time, just staring at the connecting door.
He wouldn’t
, was all she could think.
Not here, in her own house. With her abigail
.
He already
had
a mistress
. She pressed her hand to her mouth, terrified she would begin to laugh, and that if she did, she wouldn’t stop.

Schroeder knocked and came in. Was she looking smug? Was her hair mussed? Would Grace ever know for sure, or would she descend
into a world where she could never again look at a beautiful woman and be sure she hadn’t been in Diccan’s bed?

In the end, Grace prepared for the Lievens as if she were arming for a Forlorn Hope. She simply didn’t know what else to do.
Schroeder drew her bath and helped her into her beautiful square-necked bronze moiré dress with its spider gauze overskirt
and tiny puffed sleeves. Grace wondered whether the abigail noticed that her mistress flinched when she touched her. She wondered
how she’d ever be comfortable with her again.

“There’s one more thing,” Schroeder said, offering Grace a flat, square box. “Mr. Hilliard expressly asked me to have you
wear these tonight. He says they were his great-grandmother’s.”

Grace stared at the box as if it were a snake. An abrupt laugh escaped, making her sound like a lunatic. Oh, God,
he hadn’t been bedding Schroeder. He’d been sneaking her a gift for his wife. Grace felt so bloody stupid. She accepted the
worn brown leather box with suddenly shaking hands. Flipping open the catch, she lifted the lid and caught her breath.

Aquamarines. Not huge, but perfectly matched, the clear saturated blue of water against white gold: necklace, bracelet, and
earrings. Grace couldn’t take her eyes from them. A person couldn’t spend time in India without knowing something of gems.
Since her friend Ghitika’s father had been a jeweler, Grace knew more than most. These jewels were exquisite.

Her heart beating a staccato rhythm, she handed the box back to Schroeder. “I’ll have to thank him. Please put them on.”

Though the gems might have been no more than a guilty gesture on his part, suddenly Grace didn’t care. It was like his gift
of having Epona brought to London: completely unexpected, thoughtful, generous. Whatever else was going on, he was trying
to establish her as his wife, and to a society who set store by such gestures, family jewels would be a strong statement.

When Kate came to pick her up, the duchess recognized the jewels right away. “Well, it’s about time,” she said when Grace
settled next to her in the carriage. “I can’t imagine how he pried those aquas from his mother’s hands. Is the dragon still
alive, or did he have to shoot her to get them?”

Grace’s smile was quiet. “She was alive the other day when she came to offer motherly advice about my morning rides.”

Kate scowled. “How delighted you must have been.”

Grace did her best to sound unconcerned. “Oh, after
you’ve had the Duke of Wellington call you on the carpet, a mere bishop’s wife pales. And no, Kate. I don’t need you to speak
up to Diccan for me.”

Kate frowned. “I’m not so sure. Even aquamarines can’t make up for blatant neglect.”

“No,” Grace said and hoped she looked amused. “But they don’t hurt.”

For once she was pleased to enter a society function, as if the aquamarines gave her extra armor. She even made it up two
flights of steps without having her leg cramp up. She was just about to follow Kate and Bea into the Lievens’ great salon
when Bea suddenly hissed under her breath.

“ ’Ware, pirates!”

Kate immediately swung around, attempting to follow Bea’s gaze.

Grace stared at both of them, but they were caught up in searching the crowd. “Pirates?”

“Oh, yes,” Kate answered, her voice strained. “My family crest. A ship in full sail. Which means… ah, yes, there she is. My
sister by marriage. Behold, my dear, Her Grace, Glynis, Duchess of Livingston. Now do you see what a bad duchess I am? I don’t
have nearly enough consequence.”

Grace followed Kate’s gaze to find Diccan’s mother standing at the other end of the salon, looking dyspeptic in jonquil. Alongside
her stood a younger version of herself, a blond, blue-eyed ice sculpture with a seeming bottomless well of disdain.

Grace felt like shivering. “
That
is your brother’s wife?”

Kate tilted her head, looking amused. “Yes, indeed. You will understand all when I tell you she is Lady Evelyn’s niece, and
that Lady Evelyn arranged Glynis’s marriage to Edwin. Happily, Glynis suits him to a tee. The weight of
their combined arrogance could sink Carlton House. Sadly, they do not suit me. I am pleased to say that the feeling is quite
mutual.”

“Whither thou goest,” Bea sang softly beside her, “I will go.”

Kate chuckled. “Bea thinks that they’re having me followed again.”

“Followed?” Grace asked, her focus still on the pale blonde. “Isn’t that a bit gothic?”

Kate fussed with one of her diamond bracelets. “Oh, it’s very gothic. But so are they. I enjoy the thought that I provide
fodder for Edwin’s titillation. Edwin claims he is trying to protect the Hilliard name. He is very fond of making dark threats
about exile.”

Grace found herself staring. “But you’re a duchess. Surely he can’t force you away.”

“Oh, I imagine he could,” Kate said airily. “After all, he is a duke, and head of my family.”

Grace simply didn’t know what to say. If Kate was balanced on such a precarious edge in this society, and she was a duchess,
what chance did a soldier’s daughter have?

“Surely Diccan would protect you,” Grace said instinctively.

Kate smiled again. “Surely he’d try. Wouldn’t you, Diccan?”

“Of course I would,” Diccan suddenly said behind Grace. “Would what?”

Grace felt the breath leave her body in a whoosh. How could she have not felt Diccan approach? Suddenly he was standing beside
her, his body radiating heat like a stoked stove, and she found herself battling the most delicious shivers.

Kate was laughing. “Keep my family from dragging me off in chains to a dark tower.”

Diccan shuddered. “I assume that means we are the recipients of the infamous Hilliard glare.”

“From any number of Hilliards,” Kate assured him, looking unconcerned. “I think your mother may have just spotted the aquamarines.”

Instead of looking at his mother, Diccan turned to Grace. “Well, well,” he said, reaching out to take her hand and hold it
out. “And I thought seeing my mother’s purple-faced outrage was reward enough. I was woefully wrong. The stones were made
for you, Grace.”

How handsome he was, was all Grace could think, examining him in return. Surely formal wear had been invented just to grace
Diccan Hilliard. He filled out every fold and crease as if it had been molded to him, his linen crisp and his figured powder-blue
waistcoat elegant. Biddle had obviously tried to tame his curly sable hair, but Diccan must have had his hands in it, for
it was tumbling again, falling just beyond his collar points. His face was clean-shaven, his jaw a symphony of hard-etched
angles, his mouth soft and mobile.

And his eyes. Oh, his eyes, blue-rimmed, ghostly gray. Mesmer should have used Diccan’s eyes for his experiments. He could
have made people do anything.

“Have I struck you silent, my Grace?” he asked with a lazy smile.

She quickly recovered. “Indeed you have. Here I thought I’d married a mere Corinthian. Instead, I find him to actually be
a knight of old, vanquishing a dragon to bring me back treasure.”

That won her a hearty laugh and a kiss on the hand. “Then you like my little baubles?”

She fought the shivers of delight his touch inevitably incited. “You know perfectly well I do. They’re exquisite. I thank
you and your great-grandmother.”

“Don’t forget my mother, for releasing them before I was forced to do her grievous bodily harm.”

Maybe, Grace thought, her hand securely tucked into Diccan’s elbow, that was why the old witch had seen fit to threaten her.
The necklace. Sadly, it didn’t make the woman’s threats any less dangerous. Or bring Epona back. Or help protect Grace from
disaster two hours later when she found herself listening to her dinner partner discourse about the undeserving poor over
turtle soup.

Baron Hale was a smallish frog of a man of about fifty, all protruding eyes and fleshy face on a damp body that smelled faintly
of sewers. It was difficult enough for Grace to enjoy her dinner seated that close to him. It became impossible when he began
to expound on the need to clamp down on the unrest that was growing around the country.

Grace kept her temper all the way through Corn Laws and Luddites. But when the baron turned his ire on the returning soldiers,
she found that patience wasn’t an unlimited virtue.

“Good man, Sidmouth,” the baron said, shoveling peas into his mouth. “Knows how to contain the rabble. Now if he’d just do
something about all those soldiers who litter the streets.”

Grace strove for tact. “They have nowhere to go.”

“Course they do. They should work for honest wages instead of hanging around street corners, begging or robbing decent people.”

“They did work for honest wages, sir. We haven’t paid them.”

He huffed. “Don’t be absurd. They got what they deserved. Can’t expect the government to bankrupt itself on every soldier
who whines about his lot. I say get off their bums and do for themselves like the rest of us.”

“Excellent,” she said, unable to help herself. “I met a soldier yesterday with no arms. What job would you like to give him?”

Hale sputtered like a boiling teapot. “Madame, it might behoove you to keep silent on matters you know nothing about. Even
Wellington called those men the scum of the earth. They deserve no more than what they’ve already gotten.”

“No, sir, it’s you who has no idea. That scum waded into slaughter for three days at Waterloo to keep Napoleon from showing
up on your doorstep, and they’ve returned home to be ignored and abandoned. In fact, they’ve been wading into slaughter for
you for the last ten years. What exactly have you done for England in that time?”

She didn’t realize that her voice had risen. She didn’t see the faces around her go slack with shock. She saw the fury that
climbed Lord Hale’s puffy, gaping features, though.

“How
dare
you, madame? What could you possibly know?”

At least, she thought, she had his attention. She was on the brink of telling him
exactly
what she knew when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Whipping around, she saw Diccan standing behind her, his face set and
his eyes glittering. “I’m afraid I must leave early, my dear. Would you accompany me?”

All at once, she became aware of the loud hush in the room. She saw the malice on all those aristocratic faces. She heard
Lady Bea, far up the table where a duke’s daughter sat, sighing, “St. Joan.”

And Grace wanted to laugh, because she wasn’t sure whether Bea meant that Grace was pot-valiant, or that she’d just asked
for incineration. She felt smothered all of a sudden, her heart racing and her lungs on fire. She wanted to castigate every
one of self-satisfied people who walked right by those soldiers Baron Hale despised. Brave men all, proud; now blind, legless,
armless, mad from the sound of the guns, begging only for the chance to survive. How dare these parasites judge them?

It took Herculean effort, but she rose calmly to her feet and curtsied. “I beg your pardon, Lord Hale. You see, my father
was a soldier. A general with the Duke. I find I grow unreasonably emotional when I think on the valiant men he led and with
whom he died.”

He smiled on her as if she were ten. “Of course, of course. Always make allowances for female sensibilities. But from now
on, let your husband guide you. Ain’t that true, Hilliard?”

It was Diccan’s turn to bow. “Indeed, my lord.”

For Grace’s part, she leveled a freezing glare on Diccan’s hand where it was wrapped around her arm. Diccan let loose of her,
and she preceded him from the room, shaken and cold. She knew her outburst could well have threatened his career.

“I’m afraid I can’t apologize,” she said as they waited for their wraps in the foyer.

Diccan sighed. “I told you never to apologize for the truth. I simply might wish you’d picked a better time to express your
views. Hale is brother-in-law to the exchequer.”

Grace rubbed the bridge of her nose, suddenly depressed. “Maybe I should go to the country for a while. I could say I’m checking
my estate.”

“Not right now.”

“Why not?”

“Because I say so.”

She looked up to see strain in his eyes. “I’m afraid that isn’t reason enough, Diccan,” she said, for some reason feeling
sorry for him, which made her all the more angry.

He collected their cloaks from the footman. “It’s all the reason I can give you.”

And what about my peace of mind?
she wanted to say.
What about my self-respect and happiness?
Happiness, she thought, as Diccan helped her into her evening cloak, wasn’t a viable hope. If she could only settle for peace,
she’d be content. But as long as she lived this close to her husband and yet stayed so far away, even that was impossible.

He took her elbow to guide her out into the cool night. It was all she could do not to pull away. Her skin sang at his touch.
Her heart clamored in her chest. She could have hated him at that moment.

He helped her into the carriage as if she were fragile. Then, just as she thought he might join her, he slammed the door and
stepped back. “I’m afraid I have another function.”

She felt bereft and hated it. “Of course.”

Closing her eyes, she waited in silence for the carriage to start. She was certainly glad she didn’t weep anymore. If she
did, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop, and think of the talk that would have caused.

By the time Diccan climbed the steps to his house the next morning, he was so tired he could barely see. False dawn limned
the sky behind him. Along the street, maids were washing off steps and polishing railings. Carts rumbled
past on the way to market, waking the birds. He couldn’t remember how many times lately he’d stumbled home at this hour. Today,
though, was the worst.