The Hazards Of Hunting A Duke (38 page)

London. That, and to begin the husband search for Phoebe.

“I can’t possibly understand why you are not in his house,” Phoebe said. “There is bound to be talk.”

“I don’t care,” Ava said flippantly as she read the morning Times. Phoebe thumped her on the shoulder.

“Ouch,” she exclaimed, glaring at her sister. “What happened?” Phoebe demanded.

“Best you sit for it, mu’um,” Sally sighed as she flipped through the pages of a fashion plate, sprawled along the divan.

“As for you, Sally, I think there is a bit of dusting in the library that requires your immediate attention,” Phoebe said with a strength Ava had ne ver really noticed in her sister before now.

“Dusting!” Sally exclaimed. “That’s for the chambermaid to do!”

“Precisely. And as you may recall, we do not have chambermaids, so any maid may be required to do it.

” Phoebe pushed Sally’s feet off the divan. “And I would like a private word with my sister, if you please.

”

“All right, all right,” Sally said grumpily, and went out.

Phoebe shut the door behind her and locked it just to be safe.

Ava tossed the newspaper aside and dug a gown Phoebe was working on from its hiding place in a cupboard. She held up a beautiful gold brocade glittering with tiny sequins —

perfect for Parliament’s reduced autumn season and all the festivities that went along with it.

“Do you like it?” Phoebe asked, wrinkling her nose. “Like it? It’s beautiful, Phoebe.”

“I thought it was perhaps overly adorned.” “No, it’s beautiful.”

“Put it on,” Phoebe said as she picked up her sewing basket.

Ava squealed with delight, turned her back to Phoeb e so that her sister could unbutton the gown she wore, then slipped out of it and pulled the gold one on.

“Now,” Phoebe said, as she fussed with the shoulders of the gown. “I will have your answer—a truthful one. Why have you abandoned your husband?”

“You know why,” Ava said as she admired herself. “No, really, I don’t, and I am quite perplexed by it.”

Ava leaned down, picked up the Times, opened it to the society page, and read aloud:

“The hunter

becomes the hunted: A certain bit of hunting that bega n at the country estate of a popular viscount two

weeks past has continued in town. Now it would seem the hunter has been caught in a zoo by the hunted,

a lord of the highest order. The widowed hunter never had a chance of escaping, according to reliable sources.”

Ava tossed the newspaper aside. “There you are, Phoebe. He has a mistress.”

Phoebe snorted. “As do most of the married men in this town. Why should that have you so overwrought? You expected no more or no less when you married him.”

“Why? I will tell you why, Phoebe. Because I simply cannot bear it.” “Why on earth not?

Everyone does.”

Ava jerked around, knocking Phoebe’s hands from her shoulders. “I’m not everyone, Phoebe,” she snapped. “I can’t abide it.”

Phoebe replaced her hands f irmly on Ava’s shoulders and forced her around to the mirror above the hearth. “You love him,” she said, and yanked the dress so tight that Ava wheezed. “Don’t you? For all your talk of convenience and fortune, you love him,” she said, and yanked the gown even tighter.

A tear slipped from Ava’s eye, slid down her cheek, off her jaw, and landed on the flesh of her breast. “ Yes,” she whispered.

“Good,” Phoebe said with a smile, and put a little slack in her dress. “Do you remember what Mother used to say? That a marriage is made for convenience and fortune, and rarely is it inspired? Well, Ava, darling, your marriage is inspired. You are a fool if you don’t grab it and hold tight.”

“And if I hold on to it, he will wound me endlessly. Were it a true marriag e of convenience, I’d not be slighted in the least. That is what Mother meant for us to learn.”

“Rubbish,” Phoebe said as she attempted to button the gown. “I rather think even Mother would have

been quite happy to think that perhaps, just once, love migh t conquer convenience.” She pulled the dress again and sighed. “The country air must do you well. I can scarcely button you,” she said with a bit of a grunt as she struggled to fasten the dress.

When Phoebe had managed to button Ava, she looked at her sis ter’s somber reflection in the mirror, slipped her hands around her, and hugged her tightly. “If you love him, Ava, then you must go to him.”

“No,” Ava said, tears in her eyes. “He doesn’t love me.”

Phoebe sighed wearily. “You’ve always been uncommonly s tubborn, haven’t you? If he doesn’t love you now, he will in time. How can he not?” She squeezed her sister affectionately and let her go. “Wait there while I fetch a bit of chalk,” she said, and walked across the room to dig through her sewing basket.

With her back to Ava, Phoebe couldn’t see Ava examine herself in the mirror and the tight fit of a gown that would have, a mere month ago, fit her perfectly. Or see Ava put her hand to her belly and squeeze

her eyes shut.

Phoebe didn’t see the second tear t hat slipped from Ava’s eye when she realized, with not a little helplessness, that her suspicions must be true —she was carrying his child.

On the night of the grand Downey soirée, Lord Downey would not leave Ava be. “Where is the

marquis?” he asked excitedly. “I’ve an exciting proposition for him that he cannot possibly refuse!”

“I don’t know,” Ava said wearily, feeling a little ill. She’d sent word to him about this wretched event and had received his reply that he would come. An d he did come—in the company of Harrison and

Stanhope, both of whom looked as if they’d had too much whiskey. He stood to one side.

But he was tolerant of her stepfather —Ava knew, because Downey cornered her later, his little eyes blazing. “He’s agreed to give my venture serious thought!” he said eagerly.

“Serious thought!”

And she supposed he was tolerant of her, for he danced with her.

He asked her in front of several ladies, knowing full well she could not cut him and cause more talk than was already circulating. As it was, the ladies were eyeing them closely, waiting for the first crack in the façade.

When they stepped onto the dance floor, Middleton took her in hand and said, “Stop looking as if you will perish with disgust at any moment.”

She looked away.

“Look at me,” he commanded her. “They will think we are arguing if you don’t, and I, for one, am sick of

the speculation.”

Ava looked at his neckcloth.

“I’ve missed you,” he said simply.

Her heart wrenched; she lifted her gaze to his hazel eye s and swallowed the bitter taste of tears in the

back of her throat. “What, as busy as you’ve been at the zoo? I don’t see how you possibly might have missed someone as insignificant as me.”

He sighed, bent his head, and looked at her closely. “Are you un well?” he asked. There were the tears again, always the blasted tears since she’d missed her courses.

“Ava…what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” she said, blinking back the tears. “The very thing that has been wrong from the beginning.”

“God,” he said, stealing a glance around them. “Please don’t do this here. Not now.”

“When would you prefer that I do it?

”

He sighed again, but said nothing. They danced on in silence, his hand warm on her waist, his shoulder firm, wide, and strong beneath her hand. She didn’t want to miss him, but she did. Terribly.

At the end of the dance, he kissed her hand and looked at h er as if he meant to say something, but then pressed his lips together. “I am leaving now.”

“Good night,” she said, and as much as she wanted to ask him to stay, she wouldn’t. She preferred to cling to whatever shred of pride she had left.

A full two weeks had passed since their return to London —two interminably long and tense weeks. The

ton was growing restless with rumors, too, he knew —there were little whispers in the gentlemen’s club, vague on dits in the society pages. Even Harrison had asked him bluntly if he and Ava were estranged.

“Only temporarily,” Jared had responded.

Harrison frowned. “What of your father’s Autumn Ball? I rather imagine he won’t brook an argument between you and Lady Middleton for everyone to see.”

“There is no argument,” Jared lied. “Nothing more than a young woman adjusting to married life. Lord and Lady Middleton will attend the soirée as required.”

He left it at that, preferring not to tell Harrison about his audience with his father that very morning, only a

day after his arrival from Scotland, in which his father had berated him for having mucked up his marriage before it had even begun. As if he needed to be told that. As if he hadn’t berated himself a thousand

times over.

“You are a disgrace, gallivanting about wi th your mistress before you’ve put your seed in your wife’s belly!” he’d blustered angrily, assuming what everyone else had assumed.

It was interesting, Jared had blandly observed, how everything with his father seemed to surround the

heir. How sad, he thought, to be so driven by something over which one had absolutely no control. What

a miserable existence for the old goat.

“Have you nothing to say for yourself?” his father demanded at the sight of Jared’s little smile.

“Nothing, other than I am amazed at how quickly you have gleaned the gossip, having only just arrived in town. And how ironic I find it that you would fault me for doing exactly as you did.”

That clearly surprised the duke. “I beg your pardon?”

“You kept a mistress, or a series of them, throughout your marriage to Mother,” he said calmly. “Why

would you fault me for doing the same?”

His question, which he’d thought so straightforward, caused his father a near fit of apoplexy. “You are a vile man,” he said low. “Ho w dare you!”

“No, Father…the better question is, how dare you? You have disdained me since I was a boy. Perhaps I deserved it —I hardly know or care any longer. But I have done as you’ve wished—no, as you’ve commanded. I have married a woman with the pedig ree you require. And if we give you your bloody

heir, I shall be very happy for it. But frankly, I scarcely care if Ava ever bears me a son.”

Because he loved her. He loved her. “Furthermore, I want you to set aside part of the entail of Redford for Mr. Ed mond Foote so that he will always be provided for.”

“Who?” the duke asked.

Jared’s fist closed. “My son. Your grandson,” he said tightly.

“You are mad! You’ve done well enough by him as it is. You’ve installed the boy and his father at

Broderick and given them an income in spite of my warnings —”

“It’s not enough. It can never be enough. I want him protected by the grandeur of your name,” Jared said simply. “And if you don’t set aside part of the entail for him, I shall tell the world how you sought to

destroy a young boy’s world by taking his father from him in a most unscrupulous manner.”

“I didn’t take you from him!” the duke said angrily. “He was never anything to you!”

Jared let that dagger sink into his heart for a moment, then said, “I didn’t me an me, unfortunately. I was referring to your threats to tell a young boy that the man who took him in when he was an infant, the man who ignored the fact he had been sired by me, was not his real father in order to force me into a

marriage. Furthermore, you have threatened a decent, Christian man with ruination for having given your grandson a name. Do you have any idea how cruel that was?”

“Honestly—”

“And do you realize, sir, that Mr. Foote has done what you and I have never been capable of doing?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“He is a father, in every sense of the word. That is a function that has escaped us both. It is too late for

me to be a father to Edmond, and I daresay, too late for you to be a father to me. But by God, I will ask Mr. Foote if there is some role I might serve in my son’s life, and I will, at the very least, provide for that child and Mr. Foote, and Edmond’s children.”

The duke gaped at Jared.

“Oh, and one last thing,” he said, almost casually. “There is no mistress. I ended i t with Lady Waterstone when I asked Ava to marry me. Unlike you, I could not take one woman to wife and bed another —it destroys people.”

His father, he noticed, looked pale, but Jared didn’t care. He stood up. “Ava and I will be happy to attend your Autum n Ball on Friday,” he said. “Thank you for the invitation.”

For the first time in his life, Jared left his father’s house feeling quite unburdened. He hardly cared what

the duke thought of him. He hardly cared if he disowned him or planted roses in his ar se.

The only thing

Jared cared about was bringing Ava home.

The sooner, the better. He felt like an empty cage without her.

And to that end, Jared asked his driver to take him to Clifford Street. He had a call to pay.

The butler opened the door to the Downey house almost as soon as Jared released the brass knocker. “ Yes?” he asked politely, his face showing no recognition of Jared.

“Lord Middleton calling for Lady Middleton.” “Have you a card?”

A card? Jared snorted. “I would assume that Lady Middleton does not need a card from her husband.”

A silver tray appeared in the butler’s hand and he put it out to Jared all the same. “I’m to take a card to her ladyship, sir.”

Jared sighed, supposed that the jeweler’s clerk ha dn’t quite learned the finesse of butlering even yet, withdrew a card from his pocket, and placed it on the silver tray.

The butler seemed very pleased, judging by his beaming grin. “If you’d wait here, milord,” he said, pulling

the door open so that Jare d could step inside.

Jared did as the butler asked and stood patiently in the foyer as the butler trotted off to hand over the card. A few moments later, Morris returned. “She’s not receiving, my lord.”

The wench. Middleton smiled. “Like hell she’s not,” he said politely, and began to walk in the direction

Morris had just come.

“No, no!” Morris cried, rushing after Jared once he’d recovered from his surprise. “You can’t go in, milord! She’s not receeeiving!”