When the Duke Found Love (24 page)

“I can take no credit for any of this,” he said with a shrug, shaking away her praise. “I’m blessed to have come from a family with taste to equal their fortune.”

Yet the house itself said otherwise. The window glass was spotless and gleaming, the white marble steps immaculate, the stones in the drive raked and weeded: all surprising niceties for a bachelor household, even a ducal household, and especially one where the bachelor was so often abroad. Men usually didn’t notice things like that. Diana certainly hadn’t expected such care from Sheffield, given his general devil-may-care character.

The earlier breeze had sharpened, twisting and fluttering her skirts around her legs and tugging at the brim of her hat. She grabbed the crown to keep the hat-pins from tearing free from her hair, and with the other hand caught her skirts, turning into the breeze to keep stray strands of hair from blowing into her eyes.

“We should go inside before we’re carried off by the wind,” she said, beginning to hurry toward the door as the first drops of rain fell. “Besides, we’ve kept Lady Enid from Dr. Pullings long enough.”

Indeed, Lady Enid hadn’t waited while Diana and Sheffield had been admiring the house, but was already ahead of them at the bottom of the steps, the agitation on her face unmistakable. Meaning to calm her, Sheffield took her arm and guided her inside, while Diana followed.

“He will be here, Enid, I am sure of it,” Sheffield said gently, turning to the footman who held the door. “Barker, has Dr. Pullings arrived?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” the footman said, bowing. “He is waiting in the library.”

“I must go to him at once,” Lady Enid said, tugging on Sheffield’s arm. “Take me to him, please, please!”

“It’s not far,” Sheffield said, waving aside the footman and leading the way to library himself. The library door stood open, with Pullings waiting before the fire. With a cry of purest happiness, Lady Enid ran into the room and into his arms. Although Diana had feared the worst for their love, this reunion proved that whatever was distressing Lady Enid, it wasn’t Joshua Pullings.

“There,” Sheffield said, gently closing the library door shut. “Best to leave them alone together. I’m sure they’ll amuse themselves well enough without us.”

“Oh, yes,” Diana said, acutely aware now of how she and Sheffield were likewise alone together, without even a hovering footman or maidservant. In the carriage he’d pledged to be the model of honor and regard, but she did not trust him, or herself, either. “Yes, yes.”

“Yes,” he repeated, and smiled at the unintentional echo. “Yes.”

Diana nodded, smoothing her gloves over her hands. This was exactly,
exactly
why she’d wanted to excuse herself from this day. Sheffield was doing nothing but standing before her, as respectful as Lord Crump himself. But then Sheffield doing nothing was still a thousand times more seductive than Lord Crump trying his hardest to please—which, to be honest, she’d yet to experience. Sheffield simply stood there in the empty hall, his dark hair unruly from the wind, raindrops glistening across the broad shoulders of his dark coat, and the creases in his close-fitting breeches radiating from a place she’d no business looking. He stood before her, and smiled. That was all, and that was everything.

“I’d intended to show you my gardens,” he said. “Early as the season is, I understand that there are actually a few flowers to be admired, but alas, the weather is not cooperating.”

“It’s not,” she said, briefly glancing past him to where rain was drumming against the window at the end of the hall. If she’d any sense, or at least decency, she would demand to return to the carriage and sit there by herself, rain or not, until whenever Lady Enid was ready to go home as well. She should, but she didn’t.

Suddenly she heard a scrabbling of claws along the tiled floor behind her, and an overwrought canine panting. She turned just in time to see Fantôme propel himself up into Sheffield’s arms.

“Here you are at last, Fantôme, by all that’s wicked and unholy,” he said, catching the dog with a grunt. “I vow you’re getting fatter every day, old gentleman. Have you been begging in the kitchen again, eh? Everywhere you go you’re spoiled, aren’t you? Fantôme, Fantôme, Monsieur Le Gros, yes, yes!”

The dog wriggled joyfully in his arms, trusting Sheffield to keep holding him. Sheffield did, happily letting himself be covered with hair and slobber as he cradled his dog in his arms like an adored, oversized, and unattractive baby, and unabashedly lavishing baby talk on him, too.

“Do you like pictures?” he asked over Fantôme’s ecstatic snuffling. “I have a great many of those. I’ve as much French and Italian blood in my veins as English, which explains it the collecting, you know. My ancestors must have been utterly helpless when confronted by paintings, because it seems they never passed by any that they didn’t buy. I could show them to you, as many as you’d like.”

She took a deep breath. Paintings were safe. March had paintings, too, and Hawke likely had more than the king himself. As long as she and Sheffield looked at pictures, she would be fine.

“Then please show me your pictures, Sheffield,” she said. “I wish to see them all.”

She wishes to see them all.
Sheffield crouched down to set Fantôme on the floor, and to buy himself a few moments to think as well. He was determined to behave honorably, and he couldn’t forget it. Yet when he’d anticipated this afternoon, he’d intended to spend this time alone with her strolling through the garden. The flowers (for he’d been assured by his gardener that there would indeed be flowers in bloom) would have provided a genteel backdrop for what he would say to her.

But then the rain had come to confound him, and remind him of the ultimate futility of making plans. He should have known better; in his experience, planning never was very successful where women were concerned, given their nearly universal unpredictability, a fine match for the English weather. He’d always done better improvising, anyway, and letting the lady herself guide his words and actions. No lady could object to a gentleman’s behavior if she believed that behavior had been her own idea, and with Sheffield, they never objected.

But looking at pictures would be much more of a challenge to his honorable intentions remaining honorable than the flower gardens would have been. The house’s picture gallery was upstairs. Also upstairs, on that same floor, were the family’s bedchambers. Reaching the gallery would require passing several of those bedchambers, including his own, with its enormous ducal bed.

Fantôme whined, demonstrating his unwillingness to be put down by making his legs go limp beneath him. Sheffield swore beneath his breath, struggling as hard to make the dog keep his feet as the dog was determined not to.

“What is wrong with him?” Diana asked with concern. “Why can’t he stand?”

“Because he doesn’t wish to, that’s why,” Sheffield said, still wrestling with the dog, and with his own thoughts, too.

It wasn’t really the proximity of his bed that was the greatest challenge to behaving honorably. It was Diana herself. She’d rigged herself out as severely as a nun—he’d wager it was because of him, too, and not Crump—yet still he found her irresistible. The entire time they’d been in the carriage, he’d been trying not to think of how much he’d enjoy slowly unfastening every one of those little buttons on her bodice, like unwrapping some splendid gift. Even now, kneeling on the floor with his infernal dog, he couldn’t help but glance at her feet before him, her red leather shoes with curving heels and silver buckles and her neat ankles in white stockings. He wondered what kind of garters she wore, and if she tied them over the knee or below, which led him to imagine her thighs, and how soft the skin must be—

“Are you sure he’s well, Sheffield?” she asked, bending down beside him and gently stroking the dog’s head. “Poor Fantôme! What ails you, puppy?”

“Determined sloth,” Sheffield said with resignation. Giving up, he finally let the dog loll over onto his back, and stood upright himself. “I’ve told you before he is the laziest creature in Christendom. Come, leave him. If he wishes our company, he’ll find his legs fast enough and join us.”

She gave the dog one final pat, then stood, too.

“Shall we look at pictures, then?” she asked, clearly determined to keep to a definite agenda. That was wise of her, considering how Sheffield had been studying the way her skirts had tucked in beneath her as she’d sat beside his dog, how even that grim gray wool could look beguiling when it was pulled taut over the rounded swell of her bottom.

“We shall,” he said. “The picture gallery is upstairs, but we should have plenty of time. I was counting on granting the lovebirds at least an hour alone.”

He offered her his arm, the way he would any lady.

She pretended she didn’t notice it, instead walking slightly ahead of him, back the way they’d come.

It was not an auspicious beginning.

“An hour will likely seem as nothing to Lady Enid,” she said, looking about the house rather than at him. “Earlier I’d feared there was something amiss between her and Dr. Pullings, she seemed so distressed, but obviously there was some other cause.”

“Obviously,” he said, determinedly walking beside her. “I’d venture it was due to Lord and Lady Lattimore insisting that she spend so much time in my company this past fortnight. Poor Enid learned what manner of gentleman I am, and that must have been what nearly did her in.”

She laughed. “Most mothers would not wish their daughters in your company, while most ladies would be charmed by it.”

He sighed dramatically, hoping to keep her smiling. “Most ladies are not Lady Enid. I fear she finds me an empty-headed dullard, a tedious fellow who has read nothing and knows even less.”

“Then it’s fortunate for you both that she’ll marry Dr. Pullings and not you,” she said, the smile disappearing. “Your house is very handsome, Sheffield, inside as well as out.. You impress me.”

She’d stopped in the front hall to gaze about her, taking the time now that they hadn’t had when they’d first entered with Lady Enid. The space was open and soaring, designed to impress guests even as they were welcomed into the house. The floor was black and white marble, inlaid in the pattern of a spreading compass rose, and directly overhead was a splendid oculus through which the sun shone, or would have if the rain hadn’t been drumming against the leaded glass. Even without the sunlight, the gilded carving on the balustrade of the great stair gleamed like burnished old gold, and the huge old hunting tapestry that hung on the landing gave everything a certain palatial air.

It was all warmly familiar to him, for it had been his home for as long as he could remember. But Diana would be accustomed to the more modern grandeur of March’s house, and uneasily Sheffield wondered both what she honestly thought of his house and why he should care so desperately.

“Do you mean that I impress you by my own splendor,” he said, striving to keep his voice light, “or that I impress you because my house impresses you?”

She smiled again, making him realize he’d do most anything necessary to keep that smile beaming in his direction.

“I suppose I’m impressed on both counts, Sheffield,” she said. “I find your house most elegant and original, but I’m also impressed by how well it is kept, considering how seldom you’re in residence.”

“Of course I keep it up,” he said. “Why should I not?”

“Because men generally don’t pay heed to housekeeping matters,” she said with a small shrug that hinted at many other reasons that she’d rather not share. “And you, Sheffield, are a man.”

“I’m also my parents’ only child,” he said. “They were proud of this house, making endless improvements and refinements, and that’s reason enough for me to keep it as they’d have wished.”

She smiled and nodded: evidently that was the right answer, though he’d be damned if he knew why. At least it made for a genteelly safe conversation, and he plunged on.

“Do you see that oculus?” he asked, pointing up toward the ceiling. “My mother was especially proud of that. My father called it the apple of her eye. Being too young to understand, I would stand about beneath it, waiting for apples to drop. Ah, I told you Fantôme would join us soon enough.”

The dog ambled across the black and white floor toward them. He stopped beneath the oculus and snuffled at the floor, finally beginning to lap at the small puddle that had gathered in the center of the compass pattern.

“Oh, hell,” muttered Sheffield, staring up at the leaking oval glass. Here Diana had just praised him for looking after his property, and then this had to happen. A footman hurried forward, accompanied by a scullery maid with a wooden bucket and a bundle of rage. The footman bowed—an apologetic bow if ever there was one—and the maid curtseyed before she dropped to her knees, pushed Fantôme aside, and began to wipe up the puddle. Looking upward, the footman strategically aligned the bucket beneath the drip, pushing it across the floor inch by inch with the toe of his shoe.

“The oculus has always leaked when it rains,” Sheffield said by way of apologizing to Diana, just as the footman had silently apologized to him. “It always did in my parents’ time, and I expect it always will.”

“Have you any pictures of them?” Diana asked.

“Pictures of what?” he asked, still distracted. Why was it the windows had never leaked when he’d been with a mistress? “Of this mess?”

“No, of your parents,” she said. “I should like to see your parents’ portraits, if they are here.”

“They’re here,” he said, relieved. “The best ones are in the Sultana Room.”

“The Sultana Room,” she repeated with relish. “I like the sound of that. Would you show me their portraits, Sheffield? I should like very much to see them. Please?”

“Very well,” he said. “This way.”

He began up the stairs, and this time she slipped her hand into the crook of his arm, letting him lead her. She’d also inadvertently solved his dilemma for him. The Sultana Room was at the opposite end of the house from the gallery and from the bedchambers. Neither were the matching portraits of his parents in the same suggestive category as the nymphs and satyrs.