by Lynn Messina
It was good to be home.
Chapter Three
Dismissed!
Sixteen hours and twenty-three minutes later, Vinnie was still smarting from the casual indifference with which the Marquess of Huntly had treated her the day before—as if they’d never met, as if the incident in the conservatory had never happened, as if they were complete strangers.
Raising her head to look him squarely in the eyes had taken all her courage, but she’d mustered it because that’s what a proper young lady did: She faced challenges directly. She didn’t hide from them, even if her heart was pounding and her ears were ringing and she wanted nothing more than to sink into the carpet.
No, she acquitted herself with bravery and equanimity, especially if she was a Harlow.
The Harlow girls were made of the stern stuff.
And what did she get for her pluck? A polite greeting and a calm dismissal. She’d known, of course, that Huntly would not linger over the episode. He had far too much breeding to embarrass a lady, but she’d thought for sure she would see some hint of recognition or spark of awareness in his unsettling blue-green gaze. Instead, she’d been treated with the cool disinterest of a handsome peer meeting the inconsequential spinster sister of his best friend’s wife.
She had suffered that slight before and would no doubt suffer it again, but somehow experiencing it from the gentleman whom she had recently soaked with an exploding garden hose made it altogether unbearable.
Interestingly, her status had never annoyed her before. With customary pragmatism, she accepted that the ton must believe she was in mourning for her recently deceased fiancé, Sir Waldo Windbourne, a seemingly respectable if dull baronet who turned out to be a murderous spy for France. An extraordinarily banal little man, he had been motivated by the usual cause (unsettled gambling debts), and somehow the sad predictability of his situation gave her a further disgust of him. That her opinion of him could sink any lower was a considerable achievement, given that he had tried to kill her sister on two separate occasions.
The truth about Windbourne could never be revealed for many reasons, the two most pressing of which were it would endanger her brother, Roger, who was a spy for England, and it would brand her a murderess. The fact that she had acted in defense, first of her sister and then of herself, would do little to mitigate the fact that she had taken a life. There was nothing less decorous than a lethal female. For the sake of propriety, then, she had to pretend to wear the willow for the man she’d shot in the dead of night at point-blank range as he tried to gut her with a fish knife.
Vinnie, whose lack of artifice made the pretense difficult, found having to pay tribute to a blackguard altogether infuriating, but she refused to dwell on the injustice. As a matter of principle, she refused to dwell on anything pertaining to her treacherous former fiancé, and if there were moments when an uncustomary horror crept in, when she could feel her finger twitch on the trigger even though there was no gun in her hand, she simply called to mind Emma’s glowing smile on her wedding day to banish them.
She felt no remorse for her action, but if she did, she would gladly accept it to see her sister alive and happy.
Because the pretense was so difficult for her, Vinnie welcomed the custom that excluded her from the social whirl and gladly sat out ton events. The story that had gotten out about Sir Windbourne’s death, devised by Emma to posthumously humiliate him and whispered by her in the ear of that great gossip Lady Fellingham—entre nous, n’est c’est pas?—had inadvertently made her situation worse by turning her into an object of pity. Poor Miss Lavinia Harlow, widowed before married by a vain fool of a man who suffocated himself by overtightening the stays of his corset.
Yet being the target of such utterly absurd chatter had not discomforted Vinnie as much as Huntly’s easy dismissal. She had enough sense to realize her anger was somewhat unfair, but that did little to temper it.
“I’m sure the eggs will apologize,” Emma said, as she entered the dining room, where Vinnie sat by herself, staring down at a white porcelain plate with a cross expression.
Startled out of her reverie, Vinnie looked up at her sister. “Excuse me?”
Emma took the seat next to her as Tupper laid a newspaper and a fresh pot of tea on the table. “If you explain to the eggs what they have done to offend you, I’m sure they’ll apologize. You know how eggs are—such chickens.”
“Very funny, your grace,” Vinnie said, reaching for the teapot to replenish her cup and belatedly realizing it was already full. She touched the side and, observing it was cool, wondered how long she’d been sitting there.
Tupper immediately mopped up the small spill with a cloth, spirited away the tepid brew and placed a fresh cup in front of her.
Dipping her head in gratitude at the efficient footman, Emma unfolded her table napkin. “What has you so blue-deviled?”
“Lord Huntly,” she stated.
“Lord Huntly?”
Vinnie nodded firmly as she picked up her fork to eat her eggs. “I found him to be very rude.”
Emma wrinkled her forehead in surprise. “Lord Huntly, the marquess?”
“Yes, he was the height of inconsideration,” she said, tasting the eggs, which were also disagreeably chilled.
“The Lord Huntly who was here yesterday?” Emma asked. “Spent the last two years on a ship studying foreign flora? Alex’s oldest friend? That Lord Huntly?”
Vinnie did not appreciate her sister’s attempt at humor any more than she did the cold eggs, and as she considered a breakfast roll, she said with a hint of condescension, “You were no doubt partial to him because of your husband’s fondness, but I found his treatment of me very shabby indeed.”
Not at all offended by the implied corruption of her judgment, Emma examined her sister over a cup of tea. “How so?”
“He did not have the courtesy to acknowledge the episode in the conservatory,” she said as the ever-observant Tupper replaced her plate of eggs with a freshly made batch.
“You mean the episode wherein you soaked him with water from an improvised garden hose and then proceeded to laugh uncontrollably while dabbing your face with a filthy cloth?” Emma asked mildly.
“I concede that the events do not show me to an advantage, but when two people have been through an experience together, it’s customary for the one person to indicate some awareness of that experience to the other person,” Vinnie said, as if reciting a passage from Mrs. Marshall’s Guide to Proper Etiquette and Social Obligations.
The duchess, who had never been a pattern card of proper etiquette or social obligation, was not familiar with this rule. “And Lord Huntly made no such intimation to you?”
“No, he did not. He treated me with as much respect and attention as he would an old family retainer,” she explained, taking a bite of a well-buttered breakfast roll, which was, she decided, a little dry. She dropped it onto her plate with a sigh.
For an extended moment, Emma considered her sister silently, weighing the sigh and the discarded roll and the unexpected charges leveled at yesterday’s guest. Then she said, “Now that I think about it, you are correct. Lord Huntly’s manners definitely left something to be desired. Did you observe how he corrected the dowager when she mistakenly called the specimen he wrote about for The Times the Arcadia anomaly?”
“I did, yes,” Vinnie said with asperity. “A more gracious gentleman would not have remarked upon the error.”
“And not a word of apology for missing my wedding,” Emma added, managing to sound genuinely aggrieved that a man who had been out of the country had been unable to attend an event to which he wasn’t invited.
Vinnie nodded. “He is a truly awful man.”
“Without question, one of the worst I’ve ever met,” she said with a frown of censure, though her eyes twinkled with amusement.
Abruptly, Vinnie threw her napkin on the table and stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, my dear, talk of the wretched Lord Huntly has quite destroyed
my appetite.”
“Of course I understand. It’s a wonder I can eat anything at all myself,” she said, scooping a spoonful of scrambled eggs into her mouth.
Vinnie thanked her for her sensibility and, feeling quite out of sorts, went to the conservatory to finish the project she had started the day before: repotting an Aerides huttoni that Mr. Berry of the British Horticultural Society had sent as a thank-you for her hard work in writing an introductory manual to drainage systems. Although he had in fact requested the pamphlet from her, an indication, she thought, of his faith in her ability to produce a useful document, he’d seemed taken aback by the level of detail and good sense it contained. In exchange, he had given her the lovely orchid, with its cascade of rose-purple blossoms.
As beautiful as the flower was—and it was certainly one of the most striking in her collection—she would much rather have been given the opportunity to write an advanced manual to drainage systems. Working on the booklet had been nicely engrossing, particularly during the four months she was buried in the country with her brother. Without question, Vinnie loved her brother, Roger, and his wife, Sarah, and she adored her nephews, a trio of endearing scapegraces who could reliably be found with a surfeit of mud or chocolate on their faces. But the months in London that spring—during Emma’s courtship of the duke and her own disastrous engagement to Windbourne—had altered her in some fundamental way. No longer content to toil in isolation on her beloved flowers, she now craved the company of like-minded fellows. The hours she’d spent with the duke arguing and discussing growing methods and soil composition and drainage pumps had been some of the most satisfying of her life.
She thought of seeking out the duke to ask his opinion about how best to repot the huttoni, but she didn’t want to intrude on his time with Emma. They had been married only six months and were still very much in the honeymoon period, a fact that delighted Vinnie, as she considered bringing off the match to be her finest achievement. No doubt, the pair of them would still be smarting from imagined slights and petty offenses if she hadn’t stepped in and forced them to clear the air.
Recalling the scene in which she finally convinced Alex that Emma loved him—in the small back room of a ramshackle inn where his cawker of a cousin complained about being confined to bed rest after having the decidedly poor judgment to get himself shot—made her smile. But it did nothing to alleviate her mood, which grew darker by the moment, and, in a spark of unprecedented impulsiveness, she ran into her room to change into a walking dress. Miss Lavinia Harlow was going out.
Emma was still staring after Vinnie when the duke entered the room a few minutes later. Dressed simply in fawn-colored pantaloons and riding boots, he had spent the last two hours examining the accounts with his estate agent and would no doubt spend the next two hours in the same repose.
“What has you looking so thoughtful?” he asked, taking the chair recently vacated by Vinnie. Tupper stepped forward to lay a new place, but Trent forestalled him with a hand. “Just tea for me. Thank you.”
“How is the estimable Mr. Colson?” Emma asked with a brisk nod at Tupper, who refilled her cup as well. Then she buttered another roll.
“Cross with me, as always, for being unduly generous with the tradesmen. He seems personally affronted by my paying them on time, a fact I find puzzling, as I understand his father was a grocer.”
“Perhaps you are depriving him of the pleasure of grumbling over how terribly his employer treats the tradesmen with the other estate agents. Your decency is probably an embarrassment to him,” she suggested reasonably. Her own parents never paid a whole bill when they could pay an insignificant fraction of it. “I’m happy to help out with the bookkeeping. I’m a passably tolerable mathematician. I can say that without sounding like I’m bragging because that’s exactly how my governess described me to Roger once.”
“I don’t doubt your math skills are excellent, but it’s my responsibility and I won’t burden you with it,” he said.
Emma shook her head, reached for his hand and kissed it. “Isn’t that the point of marriage—to share the burdens?” she asked before promptly returning her attention to the breakfast roll.
She glanced away so quickly she didn’t notice the arrested look on the duke’s face. Even after six months of marriage, his wife’s habit of careless affection still took his breath away. For years he’d believed intimacy was two writhing bodies in a house in Chelsea, and it stunned him to realize it was actually a peck on the cheek when he least expected it.
“Besides, it would provide me with an excuse to avoid planning the ball,” Emma added. “I don’t know why your mother cares so much whether we should serve turtle soup during the first course. Moreover, I don’t know why she cares what I think. I’m far more notorious for releasing turtles than eating them.”
Trent tilted his head. “When was that again?”
“Two years ago. Lord Ashby’s house party in Dorset,” she said matter-of-factly. “His appalling children were using the turtles for target practice. I’m all for improving one’s shot, but I think it should be a fair fight. I’m sure nobody would have noticed they were missing if a silly housemaid hadn’t found one of the turtles in my shoe and started screaming.”
“And therein lies the flaw in your plan: Never put a purloined turtle in a shoe,” the duke said logically.
Emma grinned. “There wasn’t a plan. It was a crime of opportunity, and after I had the turtles in my possession, I realized I needed to change into my boots to bring them out to the pond, for it had been raining and the fields were muddy. I’d put them down for only a moment. I must say, for a turtle, they moved with impressive speed and I had to constrain them somehow.”
Her tone—equal parts disgruntled and admiring—made the duke laugh. “I’m sure if you told the dowager that you trusted her decisions implicitly, she would excuse you from the planning.”
“Shame on you, your grace,” she said, dimpling. “You don’t think I tried excessive flattery weeks ago and many times since? Your mother is not content merely to reform me. I must share in the reformation. I believe my active involvement is part of the process of character reformation.”
Trent, taking a cue from his wife, reached for her hand and raised it to his lips. “I’m sorry. Will you mind very much being a reformed character?”
Emma grasped his other hand and leaned forward. “How can I mind being a reformed character for you when you are willing to be an outcast for me?” she asked softly.
This sentiment so overwhelmed the duke that he tugged her close and kissed her with passion not appropriate to the breakfast parlor. Displaying emotion in the middle of the day or in front of the servants was also something he’d never done, despite all that writhing in Chelsea.
With regret, Trent pulled away, keenly aware that the interminable two hours yet to be spent with Colson had just become somehow more interminable. He could put the estate agent off, of course—Colson served at his pleasure and would never cavil at the treatment—but the duke’s sense of obligation ran deep and he knew it was far better to get unpleasant tasks over with than to postpone them indefinitely.
Emma sat back with a happy sigh. “Anyway, it probably won’t take.”
“What won’t?” he asked, confused. Had he missed something?
Emma laughed, delighted that she could make him lose the thread of the conversation. It was only fair, she thought, as he could do the same to her. “My reformation. I was woolgathering during our very important discussion of menus yesterday. It wasn’t intentional. I was determined to pay attention and truly meant to listen, but it was simply too tedious for any sane human being. Three decades of extravagant dinners reduced to facts and figures. Vinnie, of course, was interested. At first, I thought she was mocking of your mother by asking so many questions about inconsequential details, but then I realized her curiosity was sincere.”
“Your sister has an orderly mind and a prodigious talent for simplifying complicated sets of da
ta,” he said, thinking of the many useful graphs and charts in her drainage pamphlet. Concepts that had eluded him for years had suddenly become clear as he examined the illustrations.
Recalling her sister’s talents and interests, Emma said, “Huntly, by the way.”
The duke knew that this time his confusion had nothing to do with the addling effects of his wife’s charms and everything to do with her penchant for non sequitur. “Huntly?”
Emma nodded. “Previously, you asked what had me looking so thoughtful. The answer is the Marquess of Huntly.”
Without question, Trent wanted Emma to like the marquess; he was one of his intimates and considered by all members to be one of the family. But there was something in her tone, a certain arch knowingness, that made him realize there was much more afoot here than mere liking.
“What about Huntly?” he asked, unable to keep the suspicion out of his voice.
“It’s the most remarkable thing: Vinnie doesn’t like him,” she explained.
Trent felt certain his wife exaggerated. Vinnie was far too sensible to dislike someone she barely knew. “I find that very unlikely, but even if it’s true, there’s nothing remarkable about it. Disappointing, yes, as he is a good man and an excellent botanist, and I think he and Vinnie would have much in common.”
“But it is remarkable. Think of it. Vinnie never dislikes anyone. She was engaged to the most insufferable bore in the kingdom for more than a month and excused even his most ill-mannered behavior. My sister has the disheartening habit of looking for the good in everyone. She never says an unkind word about anyone, whatever the provocation and I assure you, Windbag gave her lots. And yet,” she announced with relish, “moments ago she sat in that very chair and called Lord Huntly rude, inconsiderate and awful.”