The Duke's Holiday (6 page)

“Contract?” she asked, looking perplexed. She dropped four
cubes of sugar into another cup and poured it to the brim with milk. She
stirred it neatly and handed it over to the old woman. “Biscuit, aunt?”

“Why, yes. Two. Young man, you
must
have a biscuit,” the old woman stated. “They are quite simply
delicious. Astrid makes them herself.” She beamed at the younger woman.

“No, thank you.” He refused to be distracted, despite his
gnawing hunger. “Miss Honeywell, you know quite well what contract I speak of,
as you yourself made reference to it earlier in the day.”

“I do not recall having made reference to any contract.
Wouldn’t you like a biscuit? You must be famished after the journey. Your long,
unnecessary
journey. They are quite
good, and I do make them myself. An old recipe from my Scotch grandmother.” She
stuck the tray of biscuits under his nose.

He began to wave it away, but the smell of butter and sugar
and vanilla wafted to his nostrils, causing his empty stomach to protest in
agony. He took one with a great show of reluctance and bit into it.

And was immediately transported to heaven.

The crumbs melted on his tongue in a symphony of sweet,
buttered perfection. He barely suppressed a groan, closed his eyes and leaned
back against the seat, his body suddenly boneless.

He forgot everything, including who he was, until the
biscuit was devoured. Then he opened his eyes and found the redhead regarding
him with a quizzical expression. He straightened, reality crashing back down on
his shoulders. Damn. She was good. “Miss Honeywell, I shall not be sidetracked.
I am here to…”

“Astrid!” came a strident call from the hallway, cutting
him off. Another female entered the room in a rush. He vaguely recognized her
from the yard and knew immediately it was another Honeywell. Clearly a near
relation to the redhead, but younger, taller, with hair more auburn than red,
and prettier, dressed in a becoming muslin gown. Her eyes widened when she
noticed him, and she skidded to a halt.

Miss Honeywell rose. The courtesy pounded into him since
the cradle demanded that he rise as well.

“Your Grace, may I present my sister, Miss Alice Honeywell,”
Miss Honeywell said.

Miss Alice curtsied prettily and not at all mockingly. He
approved of her immediately.

“What is it, Alice?” Miss Honeywell asked.

“It’s Petunia. He’s in the cabbage again.”

“Well, set Charlie on him, or Mick.”

“I would, but they’ve gone to the brewery with … er …”
Alice glanced nervously at him. “Roddy.”

As he hadn’t a clue as to what they were talking about, he
wondered why Alice was so nervous.

Miss Honeywell looked perturbed. “Well, damn and blast … I
mean, heavens. What a muddle. Find Ant and Art, then, and set them to it.”

Alice grimaced. “If I could find them, I would.”

Miss Honeywell set down her teacup in consternation. “I’ll
not wrangle with that pig another moment. You know he hates me and eats my
cabbage to spite me.”

“Madame, your pig is named Petunia?” he interjected.

All eyes swung to him.

“Why, yes,” she said.

“And he is a male … er, pig?”

“Why, yes.” Miss Honeywell blinked, as if he were silly for
even asking.

“I’ve landed in Bedlam,” he muttered. Then he reached down
and took up another biscuit.

“Well, what about the coachman,” Miss Honeywell said,
turning towards him. “Your driver, or whatever it is you call him. Would you
think that he would be willing to assist us?”

He barked out a hysterical half-laugh, and bit into his
biscuit. He was light-headed with hunger, bone-tired from casting up his
accounts for three days solid, and surrounded by lunatics, his only consolation
a biscuit. And he was having a conversation about livestock. “Of course. I am
sure Newcomb would like nothing better than to assist you, Miss Alice,” he said
archly.

“Well, then it’s settled,” Miss Honeywell said. “Find Mr.
Newcomb and see if he will lend a hand.”

Alice nodded and scurried to the door. She hesitated at the
threshold, turned, and curtsied in his direction before exiting.

“Now, where were we?” Miss Honeywell asked, swinging her
attention back in his direction.

“I believe you were attempting to gammon me, Miss
Honeywell.”

“Gammon you!” she breathed, her color heightening in
affront. “I am sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“Gammon. As in make a fool of,” he clarified.

“I should not think such a thing possible, Your Grace. You
are clearly not a fool.”

He could not tell by her dry tone whether she was mocking
him or not, but he decided to err on the side of caution and assume she was.

He set down his biscuit – reluctantly, as he was
quite ravenous now – and gifted her with his frostiest expression.

She did not so much as flinch under his gaze. Which did not
seem possible, as everyone, even Sherbrook on occasion, flinched at that look.

And then her brassy hair had the effrontery to begin to fall
out of its bun a strand at a time, then in ever larger clumps, until half of it
was dangling down her back and the other half remained pinned in place, giving
her a lopsided look that made him seriously consider howling.

She was just so completely wrong on so many levels it quite
astounded him that the gods had allowed such a creature to exist. It seemed a
fundamental crime against nature.

But Miss Honeywell did not seemed bothered in the slightest
by the atrocity taking place on her head.

“Miss Honeywell,” he began.

She cocked a brow.

“Miss Honeywell, your
hair
.”
It came out as a pained groan.

She reached up, patted the side of her bun that had not
fallen down, and furrowed her brow. “What about my hair?”

“It is …”

She drew herself up to her full height, which put her no
further than his collarbone, and fixed him with a stare of pure feminine
outrage. “What is wrong with my hair?”

“It is red …”

“Hardly a sin.”

“And it is falling down.”

She crossed her arms over her breasts, completely ignoring
her hair, and gave him a superior look. “I shall excuse your behavior because
of your long journey. Surely, when you are well rested, you shall recover your
gentlemanly manners and realize that one does not remark upon a lady’s person,
no matter what the state of her hair.”

That was when he made his worst mistake of the evening. He
snorted and said disbelievingly, “
Lady
?”

She froze, her jaw jutting out, her mismatched eyes
glinting with a fire that had nothing to do with the flames in the grate.
Something inside of him wilted.

She stalked towards him, and he looked nervously about the
room, though his rational mind –what was left of it – told him he
would find nothing to aid him against the approaching harridan. He glanced at
Aunt Anabel, but she had dozed off into her teacup, her wig halfway down her
forehead.

“I’ll have you know, Lord High and Mighty Montford, that I
am more lady than you are a gentleman. Storming into my household, threatening
to throw us out on our noses –”

“I have done no such –”

“ – my poor aunt in her dotage, who has known no
other home, and four unmarried ladies, with nowhere else to go but the
workhouse. It is cruel and inhuman, but what else should I expect from a
Montford? And how dare you question my … my upbringing? I am every inch the lady.
I am the daughter of a gentleman,
sirrah
,
and a lady. My mother was the daughter of an Earl, as a matter of fact. And
Honeywells owned this land centuries before your barbarian ancestors crossed
the seas wielding their cudgels and
cutting
up our peace
.”

By the end of her tirade, she was inches from him, poking
her finger into his chest. Which was quite insupportable, really. The last
person who had poked him –Marlowe – had wound up with a broken
nose.

“I beg your pardon. I must have been confused by the
trousers you were wearing earlier. And the pig. And all of the swearing.
Perhaps this is how
ladies
behave in
Yorkshire?” he bit out, heat flooding his veins, his head throbbing.

He seized her hand to shove it away, which was his second
mistake of the evening, because when his skin touched her skin, he felt as if
lightning had shot from the heavens, through the crooked castle walls, and
right into the place that they were joined, ricocheting through the rest of his
body without pity.

He nearly swooned. Like a besotted London chit in a
too-tight corset.

“Your Grace,” Miss Honeywell whispered. “Montford.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her. She was looking at
him with the same befuddled and slightly panicked intensity that he was feeling.
Then he looked down and realized he was squeezing her hand so tightly his
knuckles were white.

He dropped her hand and stepped back. “Miss Honeywell.”

“Your Grace.”

“I am tired. And hungry. And about three seconds away from
throttling someone. I would like a bed. And some food.”
And a wall to bash my head against.
“If, of course, it is not too
much to ask.”

She looked as if it was entirely too much to ask. “No,
certainly not. We can continue our delightful conversation tomorrow morning.
Before you
leave
.”

He laughed without humor, realizing that at this moment,
despite the mud and the shrewish woman before him, wrangling with this nest of
vipers was slightly more appealing than hopping back into the carriage.

He would look into acquiring a mount. Perhaps riding back
to London, despite the mud and the threat of rain and highwaymen, might be the
best way put an end to this ill-advised jaunt. But in the meanwhile, he was
going to fix the muddle at Rylestone and get the Honeywells out of his
Miscellaneous Pile for good. “Oh, I am not leaving, Miss Honeywell. As much as
we both might wish otherwise, I am staying here until we come to an
understanding.”

She gave him an arch look. “Then I am afraid, Your Grace,
that you’ll be staying until, oh, say,
hell
freezes over
.”

Aunt Anabel started awake with a snort, her wig snapping
back into place. “Astrid, my dear, really. Do mind your tongue. We have a Duke
hereabouts.”

He was standing right in front of the old lady, not
hereabouts
, but he wasn’t about to
quibble with her sound advice. “Yes, Astrid, do mind your tongue,” he murmured.

Miss Honeywell shot him a fulminating look, turned on her
heel, and marched from the room.

He followed in her wake, and it took every ounce of his
remaining self-control not to seize her by the shoulders and pin her hair back
into place before … before …

Good God. He must be thoroughly done in. Because for a
moment, he’d had the strangest desire to kiss Miss Honeywell senseless.

He shuddered in revulsion and pinched himself, in case this
was some horrible nightmare after all.

But he didn’t wake up.

IN WHICH THE
DUKE ENJOYS RYLESTONE HALL’S AMENITIES

THE
INMATES of Rylestone Hall were used to waking at dawn. But usually they were
coaxed from pleasant dreams by the vocal gymnastics of Chanticleer IV, proud
descendant of Chanticleer I, Alyosius Honeywell’s prize cock. They were not so used
to waking up to bloodcurdling screams, however.

Astrid, who had
not
had pleasant dreams, and who had, in fact, spent most of the night dreaming
about being chased by a twenty-foot tall monster resembling the Duke of
Montford during the village’s upcoming annual Harvest Festival’s
foot-and-ale-race, came awake with a start, followed by a thud.

It took her a moment to realize she had tumbled off her bed
onto the floor. She stared at the ceiling, where the early morning light was
beginning to chase away the shadows, and tried to figure out what was wrong.
Aside from the fact that the Duke of Montford had spent the night two doors
down from her.
And
aside from the
fact that she had not murdered him in his sleep as she had originally planned
to do.

Then the scream came again. High-pitched and very human.
Astrid bolted to her feet and pulled on her dressing gown, then flew out of her
door. She skidded to a halt at the scene before her. The peacock – Coombes
– stood in the corridor two doors down in a nightshirt and head stocking,
covered in the contents of the slop bucket intended for Petunia. Flora was
attempting to dislodge a root vegetable of some kind from behind his ear as the
man spluttered unintelligibly, spitting out bits of last night’s stew.

Astrid knew immediately from the upturned bucket rolling at
their feet and the giggles drifting from the bedroom across the hall what had
happened. It was a standard trick in Ant and Art’s repertoire, balancing a
bucket on top of the door of an unsuspecting mark.

“I presume they missed their intended target,” came a dry
voice beyond Coombes.

The Duke stood in the doorway to his bedroom, trussed up in
a rich velvet robe the color of brandy, arms crossed, an eyebrow arched.

“Your Grace,” spluttered Coombes, blinking bits of carrots
out of his eyes, “this is insupportable. Unholy.”

“Quite,” he agreed, his mouth set in a grim line.

It was not at all appropriate for Astrid to laugh. She covered
her mouth with her fist to keep the giggles contained.

“Antonia, Ardyce!” she managed to bite out behind her hand.
“Come out here at once.”

“But you said …”

“At once,” she repeated, hoping she sounded convincingly
stern.

After a moment, the two criminals reluctantly dragged their
feet into the corridor, heads bowed.

She faced them, hands on her hips. “You heard Mr. Coombes.
Your little trick is insupportable and unholy.”

“Don’t forget misdirected,” inserted the Duke dryly.

“Yes, that too. Montford was not even hit by residual … er,
splatter. Now go down to the kitchens and fetch something to clean up the mess
you’ve caused.”

“But
Astrid
, you
said
…” Ardyce began.

She raised an eyebrow, silencing the girl. “Go now. Later
you can apologize to our guests.”

“Yes, Astrid,” they said in unison, looking suitably cowed.

As they passed by her, she winked at them. She couldn’t
resist. Their spirits rose considerably, and they took off at a dash.

She turned to Coombes, wondering what to do with the poor
man.

“I think I’d best take him out in the yard, miss,” Flora
said. “Throw a couple of buckets from the well over him.”

Coombes looked even more horrified.

“Yes, I think that’s probably the only thing for it,”
Astrid said. “I am sorry, Mr. Coombes.”

“No, she’s not,” the Duke observed casually from his place
by the door.

“Well, come on, Mr. Coombes. We’ll have you sorted soon
enough,” Flora said, taking him by the sleeve and pulling him down the hall.

Coombes was too stunned to do anything but follow, casting
wild looks towards his employer.

When they were gone, Astrid tiptoed around the spill and
picked up the empty bucket.

“Am I to expect this every morning?” came the Duke’s voice
over her shoulder.

She straightened and turned towards him. “Certainly not. As
you are leaving today anyway,” she said lightly.

“No, I am not.”

“Then I cannot say for sure what you can expect in the
future.”

“Those brats should be thrashed,” he intoned.

Her blood began to boil. She put her fists on her hips in
order to emphasize the set down she was about to deliver. “Why, you arrogant,
insufferable…”

“
You
, Miss
Honeywell,” he interrupted, “should be thrashed.” At the end, his words slowed,
his voice lowered, and so did his gaze. “
Thoroughly
,”
he added in an undertone.

Something shifted on his stony countenance, barely
perceptible. A flex of his rigid jaw, a slight darkening in his eyes that
turned them from silver to something approaching a storm cloud. His gaze seemed
frozen on her body. More precisely, her chest. She glanced down and saw that
her dressing gown had come completely open, and that her nightrail was
unbuttoned, revealing an amount of cleavage that would have been indecent even
in a brothel.

It had been an unusually hot night.

She felt the blush rise from her toes and swiftly reach her
hairline.

She slowly looked back up at the Duke, whose grim lips had
parted slightly and whose eyes had grown heavy-lidded. For the first time, with
his hair still mussed from sleep, his features imperceptibly softened, he
appeared
almost
human. And very much
a man. An extremely handsome, tall, powerful …
handsome
man.

Something strange and warm and entirely unrelated to the
blush unfurled like a summer bloom in the vicinity of her abdomen, and her
heart began to hammer against her ribcage. She began to pant as if she had run
a mile.

She snatched her dressing gown together and scowled at him.

He seemed to snap out of whatever spell her breasts wove,
and stepped back.

“You, sir, are no gentleman,” she said in a breathless
rush.

“You, madame, are no lady,” he retorted in kind. He slammed
the door to the bedroom in her face.

Astrid stood a moment staring at it.

Then she ran to her bedroom and slammed her door. She
opened it and slammed it again, just to emphasize her point.

AFTER
HER morning ablutions and a quick conference with Flora and the house staff
concerning what to do with their guests (coddle and stall, for the moment),
Astrid grabbed a crust of bread and a hunk of cheese and stole out of the
castle to meet with the estate manager down at the brewery to discuss this
latest wrench in their plans.

The brewery was located closer to the fields on the banks
of the Ryle, about a quarter mile’s walk from the castle. Her grandfather,
considered quite industrious for a Honeywell, had moved the brewery away from
the main house a half a century ago and renovated the grist mill next door,
doubling the output of grain and ale for the estate.

 
Alyosius
Honeywell, however, had been less of a businessman than his father and more of
a run-of-the-mill Honeywell (i.e. idealistic and valuing things like beauty and
truth over profit margins). He had concerned himself more with the romance of
being a brewer. Which meant he spent a great deal of time tasting Honeywell
Ale. Alyosius had not been precisely a drunkard … well, perhaps that was
exactly what he had been. But he’d had his uses. It was generally acknowledged
that Alyosius had done for the taste of Honeywell Ale what his father had done
for the business of selling it.

Thankfully, Astrid had inherited her work ethic from her
grandfather, and she had spent the past ten years turning the estate around.
She was not about to let the Duke stick his nose into her business or have her
tenants begin to panic, especially now, during harvest. But Astrid was
extremely worried, now that the initial shock of the Duke’s appearance had
faded, for one false move on her part could spell certain doom to not only her
family but also to the rest of the tenants, the farm, and the brewery. For she
knew it was in the Duke’s power to throw them all out on their heads if he so
chose, no matter how much she wanted to believe otherwise.

She walked inside the granary just as a group of workmen
were leaving for the fields to take in the last of the wheat. She could tell
from the way they avoided meeting her eye that they knew about the Duke’s
visit.

Hiram McConnell, the estate manager, greeted her grimly in
his small office, puffing on his pipe and pushing away his ledgers. He was a
large, brawny Scot approaching middle age, who had been hired by her father
many years ago, and who was as much responsible for keeping the estate afloat
and flourishing as Astrid.

He didn’t even have to speak for Astrid to know what he was
thinking. Astrid had known him all of her life, and in many ways he had been more
a father to her than Alyosius. He was a plainspoken ex-Presbyterian, whose
moral compass never needed recalibration. He believed first and foremost in the
power of truth-telling. Such a practice had worked out well in his own life,
and nothing exasperated him more than the Honeywell tendency to skirt around,
evade, pick apart and remake the truth.

He had certainly not approved when Astrid had decided to “forget”
to tell Montford about her father’s death. He had thought it best for Astrid to
come clean with the Duke and attempt to reach some sort of rational compromise
with him. Hiram couldn’t believe the Duke would simply kick her and her family
off the land.

Then again, Hiram tended to believe that all people were
inherently good. He had been certain, for instance, that Napoleon must have had
someone’s
best interest at heart when
he turned Europe on its head.

Astrid did not want to disillusion the poor man, but she
could have told him that not telling the Duke about her father’s death was
hardly the worst of her sins when it came to Montford.

“Well, lass, what are we to do?” Hiram said, getting
straight to the point.

“Proceed as if nothing is amiss,” she said with more
confidence than she felt. “It is harvest time, and we cannot think of anything
but getting in the crop.”

“Aye, we’ll see to the crop, and the business. But to my
mind, ye must start thinking about what
ye
will do. And yer family. Ye’ve the wee ones to think of.”

“Hiram …”

“Alyosius is dead, lass. Yer ten times the manager yer da
was, but that doesn’t make ye a man, now does it?”

“Which is an unfair, ridiculous …”

“Yes, yes, I know. But it is the way of the world.
According to the law of the land, the Duke of Montford has the right to put ye
out on the street if he so chooses, and there is nary a court what could change
that.”

“Rylestone hall belongs to the Honeywells, Hiram,” she
retorted.

“It belongs to the Duke, lass. It always has. Yer family’s
been there on sufferance, far as I can tell.”

She looked at him askance, for Hiram had never been so
harsh with her before. “And to think I came here this morning for a bit of
sympathy. You can’t imagine the sort of pig-headed, arrogant, preening
stuffed-shirt the Duke is.”

Hiram crossed his arms and shook his head in that stoic way
of his that always presaged a lecture. “I’ll not sugar-coat it for ye, Astrid.
Not now. Ye bought yerself some time with yer little omission – he could
prosecute ye for that, by the way.”

She huffed.

Hiram raised an eyebrow. “Indeed he could. And I only pray
ye haven’t been a party to any more half-cocked swindles…”

“Swindles! Hiram!” she scoffed, attempting outrage when
what she felt like doing was squirming. She was once again glad Hiram had never
learned that, owing to creative Honeywell bookkeeping, the tithe given to Montford
was not exactly what it was supposed to be. He probably would have turned back
to his Presbyterian roots had he known what sinners he worked for. And if this
decades-old practice was found out by the Duke, she was glad that none of the
blame would fall on Hiram’s shoulders.

It would all fall on hers.

Which was a sobering thought. Nearly as sobering as Hiram’s
admonishing look at the moment. He did have a way of making her feel about ten
years old. “Don’t forget, I’ve known yer family for longer than ye’ve been
alive. What ye need to start doing is thinking about Ardyce and Antonia.”

“Don’t you dare say I should … I should what, Hiram?” she
cried, feeling even worse than when she had started from the house.

“To my mind ye’ve three options, and ye’re not going to
like any of them.”

She sighed and slumped against a wooden bench, covering her
face with her hands. “I suppose you better tell me,” she muttered.

“One, ye can march back up to the Hall, fall on bended
knee, and beg the Duke’s pardon for all of the faffing about and see if he
might be agreeable to letting ye stay on. Tis yer home, after all, an it’s not
as if he needs another castle. I’m sure he already has one or two.”

She guffawed. “Sooner would pigs fly than a Honeywell would
beg a Montford for anything!”

Hiram gave her a droll look. “I figured that. The next option
is for ye to marry Sir Wesley.”

“Cousin Wesley! Have you gone quite insane?” she cried.“You
know that is impossible.”

“He’s in love with ye,” Hiram pointed out.

“Blech. Don’t make me throw up. I have no intention of
marrying anyone,
especially
cousin
Wesley. I’d sooner marry Aunt Anabel’s pompadour.”

“He’s considered a good catch, and handsome enough.”

“He’s silly –”