The Duke's Holiday (5 page)

But whoever was reading this volume clearly was doing so on
the sly and for pure titillation.
Thomas
More indeed!

He put the books down as he’d found them – or rather
he lined them up parallel to the desk – and started out of the room. He
nearly jumped out of his skin at the sight that greeted him. For there,
standing in the doorway, was the ghost of Marie Antoinette. Or what appeared to
be that unfortunate lady at first glance, attired in an elaborately-gilded,
old-fashioned, slightly shabby paneled ball gown that might have been worn at
the court of Versailles, with a tall powdered white wig nearly half of the lady’s
height, studded with bows, fake fruit and fowl, perched upon her head. But the
woman was quite real, and quite ancient, the thick layers of lead paint and
rouge cracking along the deep wrinkles lining her face.

When she saw him, she let out a shriek, causing her wig to
list slightly to the right, picked up the sides of her elaborate gown, and fled
the room.

Montford stared after her, dumbfounded.

Then he started after her.

“Madam!” he called, passing back into the corridor.

But the old woman had disappeared as thoroughly as the
child had done.

He wandered aimlessly about the keep, searching for some
signs of humanity but finding none. At last, he came to a conservatory of
sorts, as disordered as the front parlor had been, and crowded with potted
plants and children’s toys. He picked his way over the mess until he stood at a
pair of French doors leading out into an overgrown courtyard, with a fountain
set in the middle featuring a statue of Poseidon.

The fountain didn’t work. Shocking.

But it seemed to be inhabited. By two children. One he
recognized as the child from before. The other looked older, but just as dirty
and genderless. They seemed to be engaged in some sort of playacting and were
hitting each other with sticks while running around the fountain.

He stepped outside and called to them. They turned, dropped
their sticks at the sight of him, and fled into the rosebushes. Montford strode
to catch up with them, and cursed when he rounded the bushes and found no one. He
cast his head to the heavens in exasperation, which turned out to be a bad
idea, for he found himself staring up at the North tower.

He staggered back, suddenly seasick, and lowered his
glance.

Just then, he heard a noise in the distance. It sounded
like a human voice. His spirits rose considerably, until he heard the noise
that followed, which didn’t sound human at all. It was more a squeal, or a
snort. A noise only an extremely dirty creature could make.

Having no choice, he followed the direction of the sounds
around the side of the castle, until he came to what appeared to be the stable
yard, with a largish vegetable garden stretching off to one side. The sounds
seemed to be rising from the garden, and at last he saw a human head bob up,
then disappear back over a wall, muttering a curse.

Montford looked despairingly across the expanse of mud
separating him from the garden, then down at his boots, and began to walk.
Extremely carefully. Through the mud.

He arrived at the wall and peered over it. His eyes widened
at the sight. It was a lad in a floppy hat, dressed in breeches and a jerkin
caked with mud, and tugging on a rope attached to the most enormous pig
Montford had ever seen.

Granted, he didn’t think he had ever
seen
a pig, aside from the one gracing the banquet table at
Christmas, but he was
quite
certain
it was the largest pig in the world. It was at least four times larger than the
lad who was vainly tugging on the rope around its neck, and likely to grow even
larger, given the mouthful of cabbage it was enjoying from the garden’s bounty.

The lad cursed and tugged and made no headway at all with
the animal, other than an occasional snort.

Montford decided to put an end to the farce and put the lad
to better use. “You there, boy,” he called out. “Stop this nonsense at once and
go fetch me someone in charge.”

The lad, startled by his voice, slipped in the mud and fell
on his backside, the floppy hat tumbling into the cabbage. He turned to face
Montford and pushed his hair out of his eyes, scowling belligerently.

That was when Montford realized that the lad wasn’t a lad
at all. The lad was a … a female! The slanting light of the late afternoon cut
across the garden in that moment, catching in the woman’s hair, making it blaze
the furious red and orange tones of a bonfire. He had never seen hair that
color, so off-puttingly red, falling in wavy, haphazard abundance from
uncertain moorings at the back.

Her brows were off-putting as well, thick and lustrous and
almost black, compared to her blazing hair. So were her lips, too full and wide
for her to ever be considered truly pretty, even had she not been covered in
freckles. And mud.

He gazed at her, even dizzier than he had felt when staring
up at the tower.

There was something about this female, something he could
not quite put his finger on, that was completely … well, wrong. Askew. Never
mind she was dressed like a stable hand, or had hair the color of fire, or that
her skin was riddled with freckles (blech!), or even that she was covered in
mud. He felt the same impulse he had felt when confronted by that collection of
enameled snuffboxes: the need to line something up before he screamed.

His hands clenched into fists at his side.

What
was
it?

The female’s eyes went wide at the sight of him, and she
hopped to her feet, mud flying. He somehow managed to notice – though he
knew not why – that she was a head shorter than him, and that beneath the
mud-encrusted lad’s clothes she was quite – quite – well,
curved
.

So curved that he wondered how he had ever mistaken her
backside for a lad’s.

A pang, hot and shattering, passed through his body, as if
someone had just hit a Chinese gong inside his breeches. Which made no sense.
He didn’t like short redheads. He didn’t like short redheads with curves. He most
decidedly did
not
like short redheads
with curves
in trousers
.

He liked blonds. Immaculate, begowned, bejeweled blondes
with willowy bodies.

Good God
, why was
it suddenly so hot? It was nearly October, for Christ’s sakes. For the first
time in his life, he wanted to tug at his cravat.

“You … er, girl,” he said, “I’m looking for a Mr.
Stevenage.”

The redhead’s gaze narrowed, and something like shrewd
assessment replaced her initial shock. Her brow cocked on one side, and she crossed
her arms over her chest, which consequently pushed her breasts upwards and
outwards
, sending another inconvenient jolt
shooting through his nether regions.

Montford was so completely caught off balance he had to
grip the wall to stay upright. No one had ever dared to treat him with such
utter disregard for his station. Granted, she did not know who he was, but it
was obvious from his attire that he was
mountains
above her in class and station. Good God, she was in a garden with a giant
pig! How much more disgustingly plebeian could one get? “Very well, I wish to
speak to A. Honeywell.”

Her brow rose even higher. “Do you, indeed? And which
A
. Honeywell would that be, for there
are five who answer to that name.”

He was going to be sick. Again. Five? “I shall speak to
whoever is in charge, insolent chit,” he retorted.

The girl’s face turned as red as her hair, and she gave him
a venomous look before turning away from him to take up her rope once more,
ignoring him completely.

“You there, girl! I will not be ignored,” he bellowed.

She snorted indelicately and tugged on her rope. Her anger
seemed to have given her extra strength, for at last she made some headway with
the pig, who trotted a few paces in her direction.

“I wish to speak to Stevenage. I know you’ve done something
with him,” he insisted.

She passed by him at the wall, pulling the pig towards the
gate a few paces away. She rolled her eyes as she passed, and the scent of
sweat, hay, and lavender followed in her wake, startling him.

He trailed her, furious, but still slightly dizzy from
looking at her. “I am the Duke of Montford. I happen to own this lopsided pile
of stones, and everything in it. I demand to see A. Honeywell.”

The girl rounded on him, clearly furious. “
You
own this lopsided pile? Says what? A
two hundred year old piece of parchment?” The girl snorted, unlocked the gate,
and began to pull a reluctant pig through it. “The Honeywells built this
lopsided pile with their bare hands in the year of our lord 996. And the
Montfords have attempted to steal it from us since the Invasion. Lying, bloody
thieving Norman upstarts!” she scoffed contemptuously, marching past him. “Just
because my ancestor couldn’t keep it in his breeches and had to have
your
ancestor for a wife –
tainting our pristine Saxon bloodlines, by the by – I will be
triple
damned if we lose our home to the
likes of
you
.”

Montford was further disoriented by the redhead’s outburst.
She was dressed like a stable hand, had the perfect diction of a blue blood,
and cursed like a sailor.

She was, of course, a Honeywell.

“Are
you
A.
Honeywell, then?”

“I am
an
A.
Honeywell,” she said cryptically, stopping in front of him and glancing up at
his face challengingly.

In that moment, several things happened. He realized why
she made him dizzy, he found Stevenage, and the pig decided to start moving.
Really moving.

She made him dizzy because, as he stared down at her face
from this short distance, he could better see her eyes, which were large, rimmed
with soot-colored lashes, and…

Two different colors
.
One was brown and the other was blue, sky blue.

He had to clench his hands at his sides in order not to
reach out and try to erase such a glaring imperfection. Logic told him he could
not do so merely by shaking her shoulders, but he was tempted to try.

Before he could do so, the door to the barn across the yard
swung open, and a couple spilled out of it, laughing and stumbling in the muck.
He couldn’t manage to turn away from the redhead’s uncanny countenance, but out
of the corner of his eye, he noted a rather buxom woman, breasts spilling out
the top of her dress, straw colored hair pinned loosely back from a middle-aged
but pleasant-looking face, laughing and tugging on the arm of a man.

The man, dressed like a peasant, was chuckling, attempting
to steal a kiss from the woman, and weaving slightly on his feet, hiccoughing
with every other step. But something about the man’s wiry frame, steel gray
hair and spectacles, which were sitting slightly askew his beakish nose,
distracted Montford from the redhead’s unearthly eyes.

It was …

No, it couldn’t be.

Could it?

“Stevenage?” he called out, his voice mirroring his inner
turmoil.

The man froze, looked up from the woman’s bosom, and turned
as white as a sheet.

“Your –
hic
– Grace –
hic
?” Stevenage
attempted a courtly bow, but staggered back and fell on his rump.

Montford turned back to the redhead. “What have you done to
my man-of-affairs?” he roared.

But before she could answer, the pig grew impatient and
began running across the yard, yanking the rope from the redhead’s hands.

And as the pig passed by Montford, it decided to bash its
hock against his legs, causing him to stumble backwards and land with a thwack
in a puddle of mud that reached his navel.

Montford was too shocked to do anything other than sit
there, staring around the stable yard and wondering if he had fallen into his
worst nightmare.

Or the seventh circle of hell.

IN WHICH
THE DUKE TAKES UP RESIDENCE IN A LOPSIDED CASTLE

ALL
HELL had broken loose in the yard. Petunia took off at a gallop, knocking the
Duke of Montford into the biggest mudslick in the county, Art and Ant burst out
of the shrubbery, chanting in Greek and hitting each other with their makeshift
swords, Alice and Aunt Anabel appeared at the door to the kitchens, and two men
Astrid didn’t recognize – one large and muscled and dressed in
travelstained livery, the other thin and consumptive and dressed like a peacock
– burst from the stables, chased by Charlie and Mick, the stable hands,
who were wielding, respectively, a pitchfork and a hammer.

Everyone came to a halt at the sight of the Duke of
Montford sitting in the mud, looking, for all intents and purposes, ready to do
murder.

Ready to murder
her
.

She took an involuntary step backwards at the icy glint in
his silver eyes. “COOMBES!” Montford roared.

The consumptive peacock jumped, squeaked and started
forward, tiptoeing across the muddy expanse. The Duke staggered to his feet.
The peacock reached his side, produced a bit of lace from a pocket, and started
to dab ineffectually at the Duke’s mud-soaked breeches.

The Duke gave a pained groan. “Will you please refrain from
dabbing at my
arse
, Coombes,” he bit
out, swatting away the man.

And because she couldn’t have stopped herself had a gun
been pointed at her head, Astrid let out the laugh she had been attempting to
quell ever since the Duke, in all of his sartorial splendor, had landed on that
aforementioned arse in the mud.

The Duke caught his breath and glared at her in
indignation. Then he looked over her shoulder towards Stevenage and shouted his
name.

She followed his glance and discovered that Stevenage was
now attempting to hide behind Flora. At the sound of his name, poor Stevenage’s
courage fled him completely, and he turned and ran out of the stableyard as if
chased by the devil, hiccoughing along the way.

The Duke looked aghast at his man-of-affair’s desertion. He
turned his steely eyes back to her and attempted to speak, but Petunia squealed
and began charging in their direction once again. The Duke looked at the pig,
and something resembling terror flashed across his face. Petunia rushed past
them and back into the garden.

Astrid groaned. Her cabbages! Her prize cabbages! “Charlie!
Mick! See to Petunia,” she ordered. The two stablehands rushed towards the
garden. “Flora, why don’t you show our guest to a room so that he might …” She
glanced down at the Duke’s lower portion, dripping with mud, “ … repair
himself.”

Flora nodded.

Astrid turned to the Duke. “If that suits His Grace, of
course.”

“It does,” he snapped, then began to walk towards the
castle, his boots squelching in the mud. He gave Art and Ant, who were doubled
over in giggles, a quelling look as he passed by them, which sobered the girls
completely. They scurried to Astrid’s side and attempted to hide behind her
legs.

When the Duke and the peacock had disappeared inside,
Astrid let out a groan and turned to Alice, who had come out into the yard, a
look of sheer panic contorting her pretty features. “Oh, Astrid! What are we to
do?”

Astrid wished that she knew. She had not planned on this
particular development.

She caught the glance of the burly man in livery who was
staring at her speculatively. Montford’s driver. After a moment, he just shrugged
and disappeared into the stables, as if none of what had occurred was of the
slightest concern to him.

Astrid sighed.

She had known from nearly the first moment she had seen him
standing over the garden wall that the Duke of Montford had come to call, like
some villain out of a fairy tale. He was towering, lean, but nevertheless
powerfully built beneath his splendid, princely clothing, and seemed to occupy
the space around him as if he owned it. As if, in fact, he owned the very air
he breathed – or at the very least as if the air he breathed should feel
humbled that he was allowing it to pass into his exalted lungs. His dark hair
was close-cropped and tamed into perfect submission, his features so blindingly
perfect and completely glacial they could have been hewn out of marble, and his
eyes – silver overlaid with ice – bored into her with an
intelligence and probity that had quite literally taken the breath from her
body.

She had never seen anything like him before. His coat
alone, black silk tailored in stark lines that emphasized the strength of the
body beneath, had clearly cost more than her and her sisters’ wardrobes
combined. His starched cravat, with a single, giant ruby nestled in its crisp
folds, was whiter than snow. His perfectly manicured hand settled atop the
wall, smooth and unsullied by anything so plebian as manual labor, was adorned
by an enormous gold signet ring on his long index finger, topped by a crest
studded by another gargantuan ruby. The only sign that he was flesh-and-blood
were the dark circles under his eyes and a slight pallor to his complexion,
suggesting a long, difficult journey.

He was ridiculously imposing. Arrogant. As beautiful as an
ice sculpture. And so completely trussed, groomed and buttoned up that Astrid
had the overwhelming desire to run up to him and rip the cravat from his neck.

She’d hated him immediately. Even before he had called her
an insolent chit.

And she knew that he was going to prove a nearly
insurmountable obstacle.

She turned to Alice. “Hide the book,” she said.

Alice, who had never been the sharpest tool in the box when
it came to anything other than her wardrobe, looked perplexed. “What book?”

“The estate book,” she bit out.

Alice’s eyes widened in understanding. “Oh, that book.
Where shall I hide it?”

Astrid sighed. “In the last place the Duke of Montford
would find it, obviously.”

Alice nodded and hurried inside, past a confused-looking
Aunt Anabel, whose wig was sitting slightly askew on her head.

“Astrid,” Ant said uncertainly, pulling at her trousers.
“What are we to do?”

She looked down at her younger sisters. “Why, carry on as
you were, of course.” Then an idea began to form in her head. She smiled at the
pair of ruffians. “In fact, I give you permission to act as naughtily as you
possibly can while our houseguest remains.”

They looked startled for a moment, then understanding
blossomed across their impish faces, and they grinned cunningly. They ran off
into the gardens, whispering to each other, no doubt fomenting something very
naughty indeed.

Astrid nodded to herself. “Right then,” she said,
straightening her shirt. “Into the fray.”

If the Duke survived the night, he would be a very lucky
man indeed.

Or more formidable than the combined forces of the
Honeywells. And
no one
was more
formidable than that, even if he happened to be more powerful than the Prince
Regent himself.

“Aunt Anabel,” she said, taking her by the arm and guiding
her inside, “how would you like to have tea with a Duke?”

“Why, that would be lovely, my dear.” She glanced around
her, perplexed. “What Duke?”

BY
THE time Montford managed to wash, have his trunks hauled from the carriage and
fresh clothes procured, the sun was going down, and any vestige of patience he
had was lost. The journey had been a nightmare. His
arrival
had been a nightmare. He hardly knew why he had come any
longer and was beginning to wonder how he was ever going to get back to London.
He didn’t think he could stand to ever set foot in a carriage again. It would
take days – weeks –
months
– for his nerves and stomach to recover. Now he was stuck here. In a
crooked castle. With pigs. And Honeywells.

Coombes’ hands were trembling so violently it took ten
tries before he managed a proper cravat. When Coombes attempted to brush the
lint from his jacket, Montford’s patience snapped. “Leave it.”

“But sir, I …”

He fixed Coombes with a glower that had once cowed the
whole of Parliament into passing an unpopular bill – damn those smug Whig
upstarts – and Coombes backed away, the brush falling from his hands.

A knock sounded on the door, and the blowsy woman called
Flora peeked inside. She seemed more sensible than the rest of the household
and gave him an uncertain curtsy. “Yer Grace, Miss Honeywell and … ah, Miss
Honeywell kindly request your presence in the parlor. Erm … Yer Grace.” She
bobbed a curtsy again.

He gifted her with a hard stare. She turned and fled.

He rounded on Coombes, who was
still
trembling. “Make yourself useful and try to find Stevenage.”

Coombes’ eyes widened to saucers. “Your
Grace
!” he whined.

Montford cocked an eyebrow. Coombes lowered his head in
despair. “Yes, Your Grace.”

With a growl, Montford strode outside the bedroom and down
a corridor. Only when he reached a wall with no exit did he realize he hadn’t a
damned clue where he was going. He turned around and began in the opposite way.
Eventually he came to a stairwell that looked somewhat familiar and descended
to the bottom floor.

After several wrong turns and a dozen muttered oaths, he
finally reached an open door with light beyond it. He looked around the edge of
the door and found himself staring into the cluttered parlor he had entered
earlier in the day. A fire was lit in the grate, and the old-fashioned wall
sconces blazed with light, casting flickering shadows around the room.

Two women sat by the fire. One was the old woman with the
enormous French pompadour. The other was initially unfamiliar, dressed in a
shabby-looking gown that must have once been green. It was modestly cut but
looked ill-fitting and a shade too small on the woman’s rounded, voluptuous
body. He hadn’t the foggiest clue why such an ugly garment should make him sizzle
with heat and could only assume that it was due to starvation. He’d not eaten
since breakfast, and all of that meal was strewn about the roadside running
south.

But then the woman rose to her feet, and the fire caught in
her blood-red hair, which was haphazardly wound and pinned in a crooked bun at
the nape of her neck. Recognition flooded through him. The pig-woman from the
garden. Of course. She seemed to be in charge around this godforsaken place.

She graced him with a perfectly executed curtsy, which
niggled him, because he somehow knew she was mocking him. “Your Grace. How
lovely for you to join us.”

The old woman didn’t bother to rise but peered at him
through a quizzing glass. “Is
this
a
Duke, then, Astrid?” the woman inquired in a stage whisper.

“Yes, aunt,” the woman answered, never looking away from
him, her lips curving into an enigmatic smile, her mismatched eyes dancing with
deviltry, daring him to set down an old lady.

The old woman bobbed up and down in her seat with delight.
“Oh, what fun!” she exclaimed. She gestured towards the Duke. “Well, come here,
young man, and let’s have a look at you.”

Montford found his legs moving forward of their own accord.
The old woman leaned forward in her seat and gave him a once over with her
monocle. Her gaze paused right in the vicinity of his nether regions. Then she
dropped her quizzing glance and turned to the other woman. “He looks like a
man
to me, gel.”

“My good woman…” he began, clenching his fists.

“Your Grace, please have a seat. You must be exhausted
after your … ordeal,” the younger woman cut in, indicating a rather threadbare
settee near the fire.

Montford was suddenly too tired to protest, and he crossed
the room and sat down stiffly.

The redhead settled in the seat across from him. “I am Miss
Honeywell. And this is my aunt, Miss Honeywell,” she said, inclining her head
towards the old woman. “We are honored, of course, that you have deigned to
grace us with your illustrious presence. Tea? Biscuit?” She gestured towards
the table in front of them.

Oh, God, she was mocking him all over the bloody place. The
little … “Miss Honeywell …” he began.

 
“However,” she
interjected, ignoring him completely and reaching for the teapot, “I am sure it
was completely
unnecessary
for His
Grace to come all this way over a misunderstanding that could have been easily
rectified by post.”

He watched in horror as she commenced to pour the tea
without the slightest delicacy over the table, managing to get more onto the
surrounding saucers and tray than the actual cups.

Clearly she’d not gone to a finishing school where ladies
were taught the proper way to handle a teapot.

“Do you take sugar, Your Grace? No? Milk? Of course you
do.” She upturned a pitcher of milk over the edge of the cup, until the liquid
sloshed over the top. Then she stirred it half-heartedly, tossed the spoon
aside, and rose to hand him the offending cup.

He took it in hand because he was certain she would let it
drop on his lap if he didn’t. He took a deep, calming breath, and returned to
the subject at hand. “Miss Honeywell, I am sure I don’t know what you mean, as
I am quite certain the post does not reach you.”

“Oh, but it does,” she assured him.

“Since I have sent nearly two dozen letters to this address
in the past fortnight without a response, I am sure it does not.”

She gazed at him innocently and sipped her tea. “But
I
have received no letters from Your
Grace. Perhaps they were misdirected.”

“I did not send them to
you
.
I sent them to Stevenage.”

“That would explain it,” she said, though, really, it
explained nothing to his mind. “Madame, the Royal Mail aside, I see no
misunderstanding between us. The terms of the contract are quite clear, to my
mind.”