Seduction Regency Style

by Louisa Cornell

  “And Mr. Thomas told him about the bridle.”

  “I don’t rightly know, Your Grace.”

  “William Waters, don’t you lie to me.” Rhiannon crossed her arms and patted her foot silently on the floor.

  His face flushed. He swallowed once, twice. “He did, Your Grace, but—”

  “I should turn you both out.”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “Without a character.”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  She narrowed her eyes on his contrite expression.

  “Or perhaps I should tell the upstairs maid I saw you walking out with the downstairs maid,” she said with as much solemnity as she was able to muster.

  He raised his head so quickly she heard the bones in his neck crack. His eyes widened, and his jaw dropped. Until he saw the smile she could not suppress.

  “You are a hard woman, Your Grace, and no mistake,” he said with a shake of his head.

  “And you are a traitorous wretch,” she replied as she took the lamp he offered. “If you promise to shut your bone box around His Grace, you can keep your position.”

  “Don’t let Mr. Thomas hear you use that language, Your Grace. He’ll say it’s not fit for the wife of a duke,” Tall William declared.

  “Shut your bone box? The duke is the one who taught me that one. Where is he tonight?”

  Tall William tilted his head toward the hidden door set into the wall at the end of the corridor. The green and gold oriental silk wallcovering made the wall appear of one piece. One had to know where to press to open the inset door that revealed a narrow staircase to the nursery floor. The late duke, and all the dukes before him, no doubt, had no desire to be reminded they required servants to make their life of ease possible. Servants, like children, were to be seen, not heard. Until one had a use for them. No one knew that better than the current Duke of Pendeen. His grandfather had chosen to ignore Endymion’s very existence for the first fifteen years of his life. Until he finally had no choice.

  Rhiannon opened the door and made her way up the stairs, lamp in hand. She should have guessed he would visit the nursery after this evening’s conversation. Every night since his arrival, Endymion had wandered the many corridors and rooms of Gorffwys Ddraig. She’d bridled at Josiah and Tall William speaking out of turn with her husband. She had no such compunction when it came to discovering what His Grace was about every minute of the day and night. The servants had reported his nocturnal wanderings to Mrs. Davis. And she had reported them to Rhiannon.

  “Someone has to look out for the poor lad.”

  At the top of the stairs, a wide corridor ran the length of the entire wing of the house. This floor held the nursery, the schoolroom, chambers for a governess, tutors and nannies, and even bedchambers for the children too old for the nursery, but too young to be given a bedchamber on the second floor. The faint light from the first door to the left determined her destination.

  His back to her, he stood before a large bookcase, hands clasped tightly behind him. He wore a long, black velvet robe, and she did not doubt he still wore his breeches, shirt, and waistcoat. He’d placed a lit branch of candles on the chess table before the window, a window with heavy curtains drawn against the cold. She knew, behind the curtains, the shutters had been closed, as well. Turpin had made himself comfortable on one of the three small beds in the room.

  “My books are still here,” he said without turning around. “And Hector’s toy soldiers. We weren’t allowed to take them when we left.”

  “You remember?”

  He did turn then, his face drawn into taut lines and angles in the lamplight. “That we were tossed out of the house when my father died? Why wouldn’t I remember? I was ten years old. We were each allowed one bag. Hector had to decide between his soldiers and Bertie.”

  “Bertie the Bear,” she said softly. “A good choice for a boy of five.”

  “Indeed. I loaded my bag with books, but I could not take them all.” He waved a hand at the bookcase, the top two shelves empty.

  “You would have needed a trunk to take them all.” She had stopped a few steps from the door, not certain what his mood might be.

  “Two trunks, I should think. There were more books in the schoolroom, although I do not know if they are still there,” he replied, a catch to his voice only she might notice.

  “They are,” she assured him. “I saw to it after Papa died.”

  “Ah.” He did a slow perusal of the room. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me, Dymi. I only saw to the return of your things to these rooms once I was given full charge of Pendeen.”

  “From when we all played together. You always were the clever one. You remembered everything.” He took a step closer.

  “I remembered, but Vaughn is the one who saved it all after that dreadful Mrs. Stokes ordered it taken out and burned.” Unable to stand still, Rhiannon strolled about the room. She ran her hand down the mane of Achilles’s rocking horse.

  “Mrs. Stokes was…housekeeper here,” he said with a frown. “But I remember Mrs. Davis. She was here before my father died.” She watched him search his memory.

  “Mrs. Davis was a maid in the house when we were children. I offered her the position of housekeeper when Mrs. Stokes and I had our final dust up.”

  “Oh?” He sat down on the long leather ottoman before the fireplace. “When and why?”

  She gave a short laugh and took a seat next to him on the ottoman. They’d often played this game as children. One of the four of them would have a grievance against someone. That person would name when and why the offense occurred, and the other three would pass judgement on the appropriate punishment.

  “Papa would not allow me to change a thing after you and the duke decamped for London. Not a stick of furniture nor a single member of the household. Mrs. Stokes despised taking orders from Papa on behalf of ‘that common slattern who calls herself a duchess,’ but she did so in the hope His Grace would return and toss me back into the gutter where I belonged.”

  Endymion’s expression turned to stone, save for the faint tic at the corner of his mouth. “Your father should have flung her from the house the moment she made her sentiments known.”

  “I had Vaughn fling her from the house the morning of Papa’s funeral. When I returned from the cemetery, Tall William told me she had to be carried to the mail coach kicking and screaming. I wish I had seen it.”

  She and Dymi tried to maintain some solemnity, but, in the end, surrendered to a brief but satisfying bout of laughter.

  “You attended your father’s funeral,” he said when their laughter finally subsided.

  “There was no one else to go. I could not send him off alone.” She had to know. He’d come to the nursery for a reason. And she did not want to talk about Papa’s death and funeral. “Dymi, how much do you truly remember? You said it was very like a puzzle. How many pieces are you missing? It is just the two of us, and unlike my talkative mines manager and footman, I can keep a secret.”

  “I remember a great deal. I remembered Mrs. Stokes.” He appeared to gather his dignity and demeanor as one might take a coat and gloves from a footman on the way out the door.

  “Your uncle has taken great pains on more than one occasion to assure me you remember very little of your life before London and even less of me. You fell ill the day we married, were ill for months afterward, and the fevers burned it away. All of it. According to him, the entire first fifteen years of your life is gone. Just as it should be.” This last she delivered in a mock imitation of Lord Richard’s overbearing tones.

  “It appears you are not the only one surrounded by people who talk too much.”

  “What he said is true?” Rhiannon was half sorrowful for the years he’d lost and half hopeful, hopeful he would not remember everything about his mother, his brothers, and the circumstances of their marriage.

  From the moment she’d entered the room, he’d held himself so stiff and upright, the
perfectly postured duke. As if his height and build were not commanding enough. Slowly, he leaned forward and rested his forearms atop his thighs, his hands clasped between his knees. He looked across the room at the three beds, made up with quilts his mother had made. Rhiannon had visited these rooms from time to time over the last seventeen years. Each time, the weight of remembrance had weighed on her a little more. What must it be to experience all at once the good and the bad, the ghosts of a once happy childhood, cut short by banishment, poverty, and death?

  “I remember next to nothing of the last year I was in Cornwall. Apparently, being in the throes of a high fever and being dosed with laudanum at every turn will do that to a man.” He looked back at her with a grim half-smile.

  Rhiannon’s heart broke. “Oh, Dymi,” she said softly.

  “I have not spoken my brothers’ names for seventeen years. I have done my utmost not to think of them, or Mama, or Papa or anything of Cornwall since the moment I realized I was in London and heir to the dukedom.” He shrugged. “I told His Grace and my uncle I remembered nothing because it pleased them. I was a coward. And having an entire year swept away made it easier.”

  She slipped her arm through his and wrapped her hand around his biceps. As much as she could. What need did a duke have for such arms? He stilled and then reached awkwardly to cover her hand with his. The warmth of his touch seeped into her bones like sunlight.

  “You weren’t a coward. You were a child. They took you away from everything and everyone you’d ever known. They told you there was nothing for you in Cornwall—no family, nothing. And they offered you everything—London, a fortune, a title, Oxford.”

  His head came up sharply. “Oxford?”

  “Your uncle. He made certain I knew you were far too sophisticated and educated a man to parade your ignorant country bride about the best homes in London. After all, you did take a first in Greek and another in mathematics.”

  “Did you not tell him you read, write, and speak Greek far better than he does? Far better than I do, for that matter.”

  “I did not see the point. I have learned over the years not to argue with Lord Richard.”

  “Hmm.” He shook his head. “He was wrong about one thing.”

  “Heaven forfend! What could the infallible Lord Richard ever mistake?” Rhiannon asked, every word clothed in sarcasm. His dark chuckle vibrated against her body and turned her thoughts in an altogether dangerous direction.

  “You, Rhee.” He took her hand in his, raised it to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “He did tell me I had nothing in Cornwall, more than once, but he was wrong. There was always you.” His green eyes held her transfixed. Clear, unflinching, and enticing as the devil.

  “Dymi, please…” She was afraid, of so many things. The more time she spent with him the more of herself she lost. Or perhaps it was simply the more of him she found. More of the boy she’d always loved. More of the young man she’d married. He was so lost, and became more so every minute he spent in Cornwall. He just didn’t know it.

  “You were the one person they couldn’t erase. Your name, I might speak. Your life, I might think on without pain. My uncle presented the estate reports as his, but I recognized your hand. You held all of my memories of Cornwall. You were alive, and well, and making my uncle’s life a misery.”

  “I tried my best,” she joked. Guilt swirled around her like fog on the moors. How could she tell him?

  “I am not the most romantic of men, Rhee.”

  “You are doing fairly well so far,” she muttered as she stared at their joined hands.

  “The picnic was Voil’s idea.”

  “I heard.”

  “Eavesdropping can land a lady in all sorts of trouble, Your Grace.”

  “You have no idea, Your Grace.”

  “Will you come, Rhee? Will you picnic with me tomorrow? Not because I ordered you to, but because you want to?” He used his free hand to tilt her head up. He touched his lips to her temple and then the corner of her mouth.

  Rhiannon closed her eyes.

  What now?

  Chapter Nine

  Cook apparently believed Endymion intended to take Her Grace on an expedition to Scotland. He watched a young footman struggle to load the picnic basket onto the back of the handsome phaeton being prepared in front of the stables. Perhaps they should put a pair of the home farm’s Shires into the traces instead of the sleek pair of matched bays.

  Last night had been difficult for him. He’d revealed more than he’d intended. To garner her attention. To sneak beneath her defenses. Rhiannon was ever the champion of the wounded. The trouble was, his attempt to fool her had not fooled himself. For the first time since he’d arrived in Cornwall, he’d managed more than an hour’s sleep. The fact he’d done so after his time with her in the nursery could not be denied.

  He’d feared telling her the extent of his memory. Perhaps she’d think the things that had kept him sane all these years made him weak. He’d been taught never to share his thoughts and feelings with anyone. Ever.

  A man who keeps his own counsel has all the wise advisor he needs.

  Silence had served Endymion well, but it made for a damned lonely existence. Voil had been genuinely wounded he’d not told him of his brothers. The marquess had made light and chided Endymion good-humoredly, but he’d been hurt. Perhaps he should have told him. It might have prevented Endymion waxing maudlin with Rhiannon. Although—

  “You persuaded her to go.” Voil appeared out of nowhere to slap him on the back. “There is hope for you yet. Did you beg her, bribe her, or threaten her?”

  “You are supposed to be on your way to the mines, Voil.” Endymion pulled on his leather driving gloves and walked toward the front of the phaeton.

  “I am on my way. I’ve come to fetch my horse, unless you prefer I walk all that way and ruin my boots as well as another coat.”

  “I prefer you discover all you can about yesterday’s accident, and once you return here, I want you to find a way into the duchess’s study and go over her ledgers.”

  “If this is the charm you exhibited last night, I am amazed the woman agreed to leave the house with you, let alone entertain the notion of a picnic. What did you do with her for nearly an hour in the middle of the night in the nursery, of all places?”

  “That is none of your—”

  “You need to get her into the bedchamber first, then you might have something to put in your nursery. Thank you, lad.” Voil took the reins of the horse the stable boy had led out to him.

  “I know how it works,” Endymion said between clenched teeth as he gripped Voil’s elbow and dragged him away from the stable entrance. “I was well on my way until Turpin had an attack of the winds so pungent, Her Grace and I had to flee for our lives.”

  “What?” Voil roared with laughter.

  “Stubble it,” Endymion ordered, perilously close to laughter himself.

  “A word of advice, Your Grace. Next time you go courting, don’t take the dog.”

  “She likes the dog.”

  “All fine and good, but does she like you?”

  “I don’t know.” Endymion jammed his hands in his pockets and strolled back to the phaeton. Voil’s boots rang on the cobblestones as he hurried to catch up.

  “She cares a great deal for you, Pendeen. She frets over you rambling through the house at all hours. No other lady of our acquaintance would go wandering about in the middle of the night in search of a man she dislikes.”

  “So you say,” Endymion replied. It came to him. “How do you know when and where I spoke with my wife?”

  Voil offered one of his casual Gaelic shrugs. “She isn’t the only one who worries.”

  Endymion threw up his hands. “Perhaps I should simply write it all down in my schedule book.”

  “Please tell me you did not bring that damned thing with you to court your wife,” Voil said as he prepared to mount his horse. “If you have Babcock put a time and date in that damned book for
you to tup your wife, I shall be forced to cut your acquaintance.”

  “Perhaps you should try it,” Endymion suggested. “If you kept better track of which of your married paramours have angry husbands, and which widows are acquainted enough with each other to pitch jealous fits in the middle of a ballroom, you’d spend less time hiding in my house and eating my food.”

  “Good morning, gentlemen. What plot am I interrupting today?” Dressed in a striking military-styled, green carriage ensemble, Rhiannon marched across the stableyard from the side terrace of the house. A morning breeze sent loose tendrils of hair wisping across her face. If every general looked like his wife, Endymion had no doubt troops would follow her to the ends of the earth.

  Voil cleared his throat and snapped his fingers in front of Endymion’s face. “How the mighty have fallen,” he said softly. “Don’t muck this up.” He swung up onto his horse. “You wound me, Your Grace,” he called to Rhiannon. “Your husband and I do not plot. Does anything we do appear to be planned?”

  “Idiot,” Endymion muttered beneath his breath.

  “Point taken, Lord Voil,” Rhiannon said with a heart-stopping smile. “Where are you off to this morning?”

  “I go to do my master’s bidding,” Voil quipped. “Enjoy your picnic, Your Grace.”

  “Ah, yes,” Rhiannon replied as Endymion helped her into the phaeton. “The picnic you and my husband so carefully did not plan.”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” Voil assured her. “I merely suggested it.”

  “Don’t you have somewhere to go?” Endymion climbed up and sat on the bench next to Rhiannon. She smelled of honeysuckle and heather.

  “I might have suggested the menu,” Voil continued as he rode out ahead of them.

  “Voil,” Endymion warned.

  “And told His Grace the perfect spot for a midday repast,” the interfering fool called over his shoulder as he started up the drive.

  “Do you have your Manton handy?” Endymion asked the laughing lady at his side.

  “Josiah has informed me there is no clause in English law that allows for the shooting of a duke, even if he deserves it. I daresay the same applies for a marquess.”