The Duke (2 page)

“How wise of you, cousin, not to tell Felicity as much. As I said before, I knew you wouldn't like her response. Lord, she would be hard pressed to keep up that submissive facade she's adopted for you. It is a facade, Ian, a mask, if you will. I can't believe you don't see it.”

“She would be disappointed, Giles, but she is kind and understanding and very giving.”

Giles gave him an incredulous look. “Good God,
Ian, I grant you that Felicity bears a striking physical resemblance to Marianne, but all similarity ends there.

“Incidentaly, Felicity has told me that you utterly refuse to talk about your first wife to her. It is natural, I think, for her to have some curiosity about Marianne.”

“Felicity will know exactly what I wish to tell her, Giles, and I have told her that I have a great fondness for girls of her general coloring.”

“Lord, Ian, isn't it enough that most of your mistresses over the last five years have been endowed with black hair and green eyes? If Felicity ever discovers that fact, you will soon learn the bounds of her gentle nature.”

He threw up his hands as Ian's eyes darkened. “Acquit me of mischief, Ian, I will say no more on the matter. If you wish to marry Felicity, for whatever reason, who am I to talk you out of it?”

“T
hank you for all your keen opinions. As for Felicity's character, I daresay that she will become whatever I wish her to be—if, that is, she isn't already exactly what I require in a wife.”

No sooner were the pompous, utterly arrogant words out of his mouth than he regretted them. He meant them, but he knew he shouldn't. He didn't want to mean them, yet they were there. What was he to do? Keep his mouth shut, obviously. He had the wit to change the subject.

“You must know, Giles, that poor old Mabley hasn't stopped his predictions of doom and gloom. I told him that if he didn't wish to accompany me, being an older man and perhaps not quite up to it, I would take Japper. That shut him up fast enough. Told me, he did in that hang-jaw way of his, that I'd like as not forget my waistcoat and cravat if he wasn't there to remind me. He still can't think of me as a man grown despite my twenty-eight years.”

Mr. Braidston unconsciously fingered his own flawlessly tied cravat. Although nature had not seen fit to endow him with his cousin's grand height or broad shoulders or athletic build, he believed that he presented a far more elegant picture. He was civilized. He was a hostess's dream. He always knew exactly
what to say, what to do. In his view, Ian was a dull dog, much too serious and set in his ways, and his clothes proved his point.

“Mabley is an old man, Ian. Valet to your father, wasn't he? Time to put him out to pasture, pension him off.” Giles yawned.

How very like Giles, the duke thought, to think only of the benefits of a title and wealth without any concern for the responsibilities.

He said only, “No, I think not, Giles. I daresay that I should be as lost without him as he would be without a dozen pair of hessians to polish. But enough of my time-honored valet. Did Felicity tell you of the roundabout manner in which I have succeeded the Earl of Penderleigh?”

“She said something about a great aunt, an Englishwoman and the absurd Scottish courts. I'm loath to say that she quite lost interest in the subject when a new ball gown arrived from Madame Flauquet. She wanted my opinion of the gown, of course.”

“Of course. Well, I have no waistcoats that cry out for your opinion, so you have no choice but to listen to me.”

Mr. Braidston waved his monocle and settled back against the settee, a look of gentle suffering setting comically on his face. “My heart is a-pounding, my soul awaits your poetry.”

Ian didn't have time to get beyond the name of Robertson before his butler gently opened the double library doors. “Your pardon, your grace. A Dr. Edward Mulhouse is here to see you.”

“Edward! Good God, it's been months. Show him in, James. You remember Edward Mulhouse, don't you, Giles? You met him on your last visit to Carmichael Hall. I fancy that with him I'll have a more attentive audience.”

Edward Mulhouse strode into the duke's darkly
elegant library, his tanned, lean face alight with pleasure. He was a huge bear of a man with large hands and large feet. But he was nattily dressed, though not as elegantly turned out as Mr. Braidston, a fact that Giles quickly noted. He and the duke had become fast friends as boys.

The two gentlemen shook hands, and Ian clapped his friend's shoulders. “However did all your patients allow you to escape from Suffolk?”

“There was only one lame horse when I left, Ian. Not even a single boil. I couldn't even scare up a sprained ankle. I was unneeded and unwanted. I was downcast. What could I do but come to the fleshpots of London and visit my father? I thought I would give you a marvelous treat and visit you. So here I am.”

“Excellent. Edward, you remember, of course, my cousin, Giles Braidston?”

“Indeed, I do. A pleasure to see you again.”

Giles suffered having his hand gripped by a man built like an oak tree, who could likely take a broken leg and pull it back into place without even a huff.

He said with a sigh, “Do sit down, Edward. There are now two of us that Ian can bore to the devil.”

“If you must know, Edward, I have just come into an earldom in Scotland and was in the process of telling Giles here how it all came about.” He handed Edward a glass of sherry. “But first, my friend, does all go well at Carmichael Hall? Is Danvers still his same stiff, arthritic self?”

Without a trace of envy Edward pictured the duke's Suffolk estate, Carmichael Hall, and its many inhabitants. “Danvers is just as you describe him. I swear, Ian, your butler frequently makes me feel as though he's the master. His dignity tends to be overwhelming.”

“Ian keeps him on to bolster his importance.”

“Untrue, Giles, you're the one who likes bolstering.”

“You do too, Ian. You're just used to it, thus you don't ever remark upon it.”

Could that possibly be true? the duke wondered. Conversation continued in this vein for some minutes before Edward cocked his head to one side and said, “Enough of Carmichael Hall, London, the king, and everyone's importance. What is all of this about a Scottish earldom, Ian?”

“Oh,” Giles moaned, “and here I'd thought we'd distracted him.”

“Not a chance, Giles. I'm just sorry that I have so few facts, for I would like to string out the telling for your benefit.”

Giles rolled his eyes heavenward, but the duke ignored him, and for a moment he appeared lost in his thoughts, his long fingers stroking the firm line of his jaw.

“It's curious, really,” he said finally. “I come to the estate and title through my great aunt, my grandmother's only sister, who, as I understand it, married Angus Robertson soon after Bonnie Prince Charlie's final bid for the throne. There was some sort of legal debacle, God knows what, but the courts ruled that the title and estate would come to me. There are no other male relatives.” He paused a moment and cast a twinkling eye toward his cousin. “The lowland Robertsons are not, of course, to be confused with the highland Robertsons.”

“Indeed not,” Giles said, nodding and looking as wise as the Bishop of York. “Never would I have put the two together. At least not in this lifetime or the next, for that matter.”

“All that I know from my English solicitor is that there are no Scottish male relatives to inherit, the only
son remaining to the earl having died in seventeen ninety-five, leaving three daughters.”

Mr. Braidston yawned delicately behind his very white hand. “Ancient history is such a bore, don't you agree, Edward?” At his grin, Giles added, “Thank God, Ian, that you have brought us quickly to the present. I don't suppose you told Felicity about this multitude of females? Three of them? That would bring a wrinkle to her brow sure to displease her mama.”

“As to Felicity's displeasure, Giles, from my understanding, all the females in question are children. At least that is what I inferred from my great aunt's letter.”

Edward Mulhouse looked startled. “The old woman is still alive? Good God, she must be a relic, someone old enough to have seen the flood in the Bible.”

“Very much alive. She must be at least seventy years old now, or eighty or one hundred. Who knows?”

Mr. Braidston rose, allowing a look of commiseration to darken his face. “Poor Ian, playing a nursemaid to an old harridan and guardian to a gaggle of brats. Well, I must be off, old fellow. I'll leave poor Edward here as you contemplate your fate.”

“A new waistcoat awaits your inspection, Giles?”

“Indeed it does. I must decide if the puce stripes will be best contemplated by gold or silver buttons. Naturally the shape of the buttons and the size are also prime considerations. This sort of thing takes time.”

Giles turned to Edward. “Do call on me in Brook Street. Ian, here, is journeying to Scotland before the end of the week. Ian, I'll see you before you leave. I hope your reception in Scotland won't be unpleasant.”

After Giles had been shown from the drawing room, Edward said, “Even though it's been fifty years or so
since Culloden, I understand that the Scots don't in general look favorably upon their English neighbors.”

The duke said quietly, “I have thought about that, Edward. I have decided to take only Mabley with me. Whatever their attitude toward the English, I have no wish for them to despise me because I come armed with ten servants and pack mules carrying all my belongings. Damn Giles anyway. Trust him to think only of an old relic and a gaggle of girls.

“Now, enough of my affairs, Edward. Tell me, which of London's more infamous fleshpots would you like to frequent during your visit?”

Actually, Edward had composed a quite impressive list, since his visits to London were few and far between.

“Good God, Edward,” the duke said in some amazement when his friend had finished, “You'll have me driving out of London with a head hung so low from brandy that it will take me the entire journey to recover.”

That, Edward hoped, smiling, was just what he wanted. Suffolk was a fine place, but a fleshpot, now that was just the thing he needed.

“All the way to Scotland then, Ian,” Edward said, and clicked his glass to his host's.

“Damn, but this will be fun. Perhaps the pain will be worth it. You're a doctor. Can't you make the days after less painful?”

“Nary a bit, sorry,” Edward said cheerfully. “It's nearly four o'clock in the afternoon. Don't we need to make plans for the evening?”

Ian thought of his mistress, the lovely Cherry Bright—he'd always prayed it was a stage name—and sighed. “Perhaps this doesn't include visiting a place like Madame Trevalier's?”

“Oh, yes. I'm ready,” said Edward. “More than ready. I've been immured in the country for six
months. There are only virtuous squires' daughters and married women. All the daughters giggle and give me sloe-eyed looks and make me nervous. The wives look at me with the kind of interest that scares the hell out of me. There's nothing else but sheep. What's a poor doctor to do?”

“All right,” said the duke. “We'll visit every fleshpot until you're sated.”

“Then look at my list, Ian. Yes, read it all the way down. Have I missed some of the best places?”

“Where did you get this bloody list?”

“From the ostler at the Gaggle Goose Inn, where I'm staying. He has a lovely daughter, but I won't get near her.”

The duke sighed. “Come back here at six o'clock and bring your gear. I can't abide the thought of you staying at the Gaggle Goose Inn. You'll stay with me. And you'll stay as long as you like. Then we'll eat at my club and begin on your list.”

One didn't let down one's friends, particularly when one had hunted, fished, and committed uncounted mischief with that friend, beginning at the tender age of six.

L
ady Adella Wycliff Robertson, dowager countess of Penderleigh, lifted her worn ebony cane and waved its blunted tip toward her granddaughter. “Come, child, I won't have ye slouching about, looking just like Morag before she itches herself. Though ye carry the Robertson name, there's still English blood in yer veins and that makes ye a lady. Ladies don't slouch, do ye hear?”

“Aye, Grandmama,” Brandy said, and squared her shoulders. There were chilling drafts wafting through the dowager's large, circular sitting room that always made her want to huddle into a round ball for warmth.

Even though the stone walls were covered with ancient thick wool tapestries, they had long ago been soaked to their fibers by the damp cold from the North Sea. Occasionally Brandy saw the frayed edges of the tapestries billow forward as the harsh sea winds whistled through the craggy castle stones. She inched closer to the fire in the age-blackened hearth.

“Is it true, Grandmama, what cousin Bertrand told me? The new earl is really an English duke? He's really to be our new master?”

“That he is, child. As I've told ye, his grandmother was my only sister.” She snorted. “She was weak, had
pap for blood and water for spirit. Lord, what separate paths we traveled . . .”

Lady Adella's voice trailed off, and Brandy realized that her grandmother's mind had traveled far away from her, many misty years in the past. She waited patiently for a few moments, then leaned forward and shook her grandmother's black satin sleeve.

“Grandmama, do ye think he will come to Penderleigh, this English duke?”

“He?” Lady Adella straightened and focused her faded blue eyes upon her granddaughter. “Och, the duke. Come here, ye say?” She curled thin lips that hadn't been kissed by a man in thirty years. “It's not likely, child. I would imagine, if anything, he will send one of those horse-faced men of business in their shiny black suits to poke about. An absent English master is what we'll have, Brandy, who will care only to increase our rents. Aye, he'll take and take until there's nothing left. He just might take the old rusted cannon.”

Brandy's expressive face turned red. “But we don't have any rents. We don't have hardly anything. Why, our crofters would starve if it weren't for the fishing. Grandmama, ye must be wrong—the blood in my veins that makes me a lady, it can't be English. If no English lady would do such a thing, then why would an English gentleman?”

Lady Adella sat back and drummed her arthritic fingers on the curved handle of her cane. She couldn't hate the English, for she was one of them. Still, she couldn't forget Culloden, the years of vicious English reprisals, the devastation of crofts and manors alike, the destruction of the once proud clans. She'd managed to save the Robertsons, not the highland branch, to be sure, for the Duke of Cumberland had sworn to crush them beneath the heel of his boot, and he had. They'd been slaughtered, the men, the women, the
children. So little left in the highlands, except hopeless rage and the bone-deep desire for revenge.

Until nearly ten years ago even the innocent bagpipes were forbidden, the English masters reasoning that the sad, harsh sounds might reunite the clans, calling back their now far distant glory. Aye, she thought, she was still English to her bones, despite the more than fifty years spent in this isolated, forbidding castle on the North Sea.

She drew a deep sigh and said slowly, “No, Brandy, I was wrong to speak like that of the English duke. He is of my blood and thus also of yours. Time will show what kind of man he is. Maybe he won't be that bad.”

She watched Brandy's strange amber eyes narrow and her nostrils flare. That was very English of her, Lady Adella thought. No one had even had to teach her how to do it properly. The girl had pride and she hadn't gotten it from the weak, willful Robertsons, but from her.

If only she had been born a boy, how very different everything would be now. There would be no Englishman to lay claim to a Scottish title and estate.

Brandy suddenly uncoiled her arms and legs and came up to rest upon her knees, never losing her balance on the small square pillow at her grandmother's feet. She stretched languidly, pulled her arms above her head, and arched her back.

Lady Adella blinked, seeing her with new eyes. Although she couldn't be certain, her eyesight not all that exceptional now, it seemed to her that the girl's breasts were straining against the bodice of her old blue muslin gowns, breasts that appeared much more exceptional than her eyesight. Her narrow waist was unmistakable against the arch of her back. Somehow the years had escaped her. Brandy must have long
since begun her monthly cycle. Lady Adella frowned. “How old are ye, child?”

Brandy swung around at her grandmother's words, the two heavy blond braids falling forward to touch the faded carpet. “I'll be nineteen, Grandmama, on Michaelmas. You don't remember?”

“Watch your impertinent mouth, girl. You're eighteen, then. Don't mince words with me. Michaelmas bedammed, you're just into your eighteenth year. Naturally, I remember very well every birthday of every Robertson in this benighted family. Do ye think me a senile old woman?”

“Not at all, Grandmama. Stubborn and imperious, but never senile. Mayhap a bit autocratic even, but not more than you should be.”

“See that ye don't, miss,” Lady Adella said, leaving Brandy to wonder what she was referring to. Lady Adella closed her eyes and settled back into the soft cushions of her favorite chair. Eighteen, nearly nineteen, come next Michaelmas. Marriageable age she was. More than marriageable age. And there was Constance. Lord, she must be all of sixteen now. And little Fiona, not so very small now. Lady Adella ticked off years in her mind. Sniveling little Emily, dying in childbed with Fiona—why, that was all of six years ago, the same year the ridiculous French had been busily slaughtering each other. Amiable and weak Clive, her second son, left to himself with three daughters. How disconsolate he had been before he too had died when his boat had gone down in a storm not a hundred yards from shore.

Brandy pulled her tartan shawl more closely over her shoulders, tying it in its usual sturdy knot between her breasts. It would be her constant companion until the end of April, when the heather burst into purple bloom. Then she didn't know quite what she'd do.
The shawl would be too warm. She would have to think of something.

She smiled in anticipation of the warm, breezy spring weather, though even then the sea currents sometimes chilled the winds as they swept across the rocky cliffs. Perhaps she would be lucky enough to find a patch of white heather this year, said to bring good fortune.

She wriggled her cramped toes in slippers that had just recently grown too small, and shifted her position. She knew not to interrupt Grandmama while she was in one of her reminiscing moods. She thought of her grandfather and felt a twinge of sadness that he was gone, yet she was forced to admit to herself, she hadn't been particularly fond of him. He was even crustier and bawdier than the rest of the family, delighting, she sometimes thought, at making her squirm as if she had to go to the convenience at his unending coarse jests. What a pity it was that he had died refusing to reconsider Uncle Claude's disinheritance. If only Uncle Claude could have been the next Earl of Penderleigh, there would be no English stranger coming to take their lands.

Brandy glanced up at the ancient clock, set at an angle like a drunken sailor on the mantelpiece. Nearly four o'clock and time for tea, a tradition that Lady Adella had firmly established over her husband's grumbling some fifty years ago. She listened for Crabbe's familiar heavy wooden step.

A knock sounded on the oaken door. The glazed look fell slowly from Lady Adella's eyes. “Och, tea time, is it?” She raised her voice. “Well, come in, Crabbe, don't dawdle, damn yer dim eyes.”

The tall, stout Crabbe, a silver tea service held gently in his large hands, strode into the sitting room. Cousin Percival waited behind him.

“Master Percival be here to see yer ladyship,” Crabbe said, quite unnecessarily.

Brandy watched with sinking heart as Lady Adella's parchment features cracked into a wide smile. It was always so. Brandy shivered and rose slowly to her feet, retreating to stand behind her grandmother's high-backed chair. She disliked Percy intensely, not only because he flattered Lady Adella so shamelessly but also because she had begun to fear him.

Last Michaelmas, at her birthday, he had begun to stare at her oddly, his hooded green eyes intent with a look she didn't understand but somehow recognized deep inside her. She'd figured over the winter what that look meant. It scared her to her toes.

Lady Adella said, “Come, Crabbe, don't stand there like a flabby dolt. The tea tray sets on the table as it has for the past fifty years. That's right. Now ye may take yerself off—and tell Cook that I've no wish to see another tureen of lentil and rice soup this evening. I've had enough of that swill to burn my belly to the ground. Tell her to prepare something special—my grandson is here.”

Lady Adella turned to Percival and waved her cane in the direction of a faded green velvet settee opposite her.

“Well, my boy, it's about time ye present yerself. Sit down, sit down. Brandy child, pour the tea. My fingers are stiff as my cane today.”

Brandy slithered self-consciously from behind her grandmother's chair. She had reached down to clutch the silver handle of the teapot when Percy's hand covered her wrist.

“Good day to ye, little cousin. You're looking remarkably fit.” His hand tightened about her wrist, and she felt his fingers gently stroke the palm of her hand.

She wanted to hit him on the head with the teapot, but it was so old, so fragile, she was afraid she'd give
it even more dents—that, or it would just burst apart. She jerked her hand free, managing to keep her mouth shut. She wanted no scene in front of Lady Adella. She wiped her palm on her skirt.

He laughed softly even as he said, “My dear grandmother, how do ye contrive to grow more deliciously lovely by the year?” He bowed low and planted a light kiss on her blue-veined hand.

“Ye're a dog, Percy, my boy, but a dog of my liking. Now, why didn't ye come when I bade ye? Three months late to offer yer condolences. Were the truth to be told, it surprises me even now that ye would forgo all yer dissipations in Edinburgh.”

“I'm not a hypocrite, lady. Ye must know that Lord Angus's passing must bring all his saddened relations sooner or later back to this heap of damp stone to pay their respects. Some of us just take longer than others.”

“Yer tea, cousin Percy.”

“Ah, a bright light amid the dismal shadows. My thanks, little cousin. Ye grow more and more like the fair anemones waiting to be plucked.”

“Yer attempt at simile sets wrong with the child, Percy,” Lady Adella said, all sharp now because she'd realized that Percy's experienced male eye had observed the changes in Brandy before she had.

“Grandmama, may I be excused? I promised to go for a walk with Constance and Fiona.”

“Aye, child, ye may, but mind ye not to be late. Ye know I don't like my soup cold.”

Brandy dipped an awkward curtsy toward her cousin, picked up her skirts, and was out the door in a flash. She thought she heard a chuckle as she slipped from the room, curse him.

“Not so much a child anymore, lady,” Percy said with sufficient loudness that Brandy caught his words from the corridor.

“Don't flirt with the girl, Percy. She's far too young yet and inexperienced to glean yer meaning.” She locked her stiff fingers about the cup handle and took a noisy sip of the scalding tea through her remaining teeth. She saw his hooded green eyes narrow, as if in a challenge, and smiled to herself. Aye, all Robertson males were the same. Flamboyant and weak, the lot of them. Always believed themselves to be gods to women. Ha, rutting stoats who whined when they didn't get what they wanted, which was usually another woman.

“To yer continued immortality, lady,” Percy said, raising his cup.

Lady Adella gave a parchment laugh. “Aye, indeed. I swore that I would cling to this world longer than Angus. He was exceedingly furious when the doctor told him that he was dying. If there had been any money left, I swear he would have burned it rather than leave it in my hands, poor old gouty bastard.”

“I do wonder how he feels now, roasting in Hades, knowing that you're here and I'm here.” Percy smoothed the bitter sarcasm from his voice as he added, “At least now I can visit Penderleigh whenever I wish to.”

Lady Adella looked at her hands, at the teacup on the small table beside her, then grinned at Percy. “What would ye say, my boy, if I were to make ye legitimate?”

Percy felt his blood suddenly pounding at his temples, but there was wariness in his voice. “Ye think to make up for years upon years of slights, lady? Old Angus would rise up from his grave and strangle ye.”