by Anne Gracie
“Do you deny that you have extracted from her a promise?”
“I could deny it, I suppose, but I doubt you would believe me.” He sighed plaintively.
“Disgraceful! Especially for a man of your position. Y’must have known the girl was too young to be allowed to make a promise like that without the knowledge of her guardian!”
Gideon glanced at Prudence and shrugged. “She does not seem too young to me.”
“Blast it, man—sixteen is far too young!”
Gideon stared at Prudence in shock. “You cannot be only sixteen! I do not believe it! You look, er, much more mature—” His eyes dropped to the evidence of her maturity.
“Do not prevaricate with me, man! I am talkin’ about four and a half years ago, as you very well know!”
“Four and a half years ago?” Gideon repeated blankly.
Prudence, observing his hesitation, stepped into the breach. “When we became betrothed, of course. You must have known I was sixteen at the time.”
“Must I?” He grinned. “How?”
“We discussed it at the time,” she replied with composure. “You have forgotten.”
“Ah yes, I must have been thinking of other things at the time,” he agreed, adding softly. “So, that means you must be, what?—add four and a half to sixteen—more than twenty now? Such a great age. No wonder Great-uncle Oswald is desperate to fire you off! Almost on the shelf, as you are.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and her fists clenched as if she itched to box his ears. She was utterly delightful, thought Gideon, enjoying himself hugely.
“But you are a duke!” Sir Oswald thundered. “Why wait four years if you wanted the girl?”
“Why, indeed?” Gideon poured himself another cognac. “Brandy, Sir Oswald?”
“Poisonin’ your innards with brandy? At this hour of the morning? Disgraceful!” Sir Oswald turned puce.
“Ah yes, Miss Merridew did warn me. Tea for you, then,” agreed Gideon gently and waved a hand toward the teapot. “Or shall I ring for a fresh pot?”
With visible difficulty, Sir Oswald harnessed his outrage and moderated his tone. “No, no. Nothin’ to drink, I thank you. What I am tryin’ to understand,” he said, “is why all the secrecy and creepin’ around?”
Gideon raised his eyebrows. “Have I been creepin’ around?” he asked Prudence in a tone of dread. “How very peculiar of me.”
Though she primmed her mouth at him, a dimple betrayed her. She was enchanting, caught like this between amusement and outrage.
Sir Oswald persisted. “You know what I mean, blast it! If you wanted the gel, you must have known your suit would be looked on favorably—dammit, you are a duke, after all, even if you do dress like a shag bag!”
Gideon looked affronted. “A shag bag?” He glanced ruefully down at his disheveled clothing, sighed, and turned a pair of mournful eyes on Prudence. “I creep about, and I dress like a shag bag. Are you sure you still wish to be betrothed to me, my dear?”
“No! Not at all,” Prudence snapped in exasperation. The interview was not going at all as she had planned it. She should have taken control of the conversation much earlier, only her brain seemed to have seized up for a moment after that kiss. Several moments, in fact. Instead of concentrating on the matter at hand, her wretched mind kept sliding back to relive that scandalous kiss. Even her lips still seemed to tingle from it.
She was in command of herself now, but in the meantime the situation had galloped out of control. If only this wretched duke would stop his nonsense and let her enact the role she had spent half the night rehearsing, it would all be sorted out by now. Instead he seemed to be having a high old time of it.
“Enough of this shilly-shallyin’ around!” snapped Great-uncle Oswald. “I want an answer—now! Why did you not come to speak to her guardian, like an honest man?”
Prudence opened her mouth to explain.
“Be silent, gel! I want to hear it from him, dammit! He has spent long enough avoidin’ the question!” He turned to the duke. “Come, sirrah! Explain! Why did you not ask for her hand—openly—like a man?”
There was a short silence as the duke considered the question. Prudence held her breath.
“I was shy,” said six-foot-one of bashful male. He grunted as a sharp, feminine elbow thudded inconspicuously into his side.
Prudence stepped forward resolutely. “Great-uncle Oswald, my eyes have been opened. I no longer wish to be betrothed to this…this…”
“Cad,” the duke supplied, sotto voce.
“Cad,” she declared, mastering the faint quaver in her voice. “I find I was mistaken in his character. I was foolish at sixteen, but now I am, er, a woman grown—”
“Beautifully grown,” murmured a deep voice in her ear.
“And I could not possibly marry a man who did not have the courage to face you or Grandpapa like a ma—”
“Not Grandpapa as well!” The cad beside her groaned theatrically. “What a miserable coward I have been!”
“Yes,” she agreed severely. “And now it is too late for that, since poor Grandpapa lies—”
“God rest his soul,” the wretch intoned piously.
“Poor Grandpapa lies on his sickbed!” Prudence corrected him. “And he is therefore unable to be spoken to.” She faced Great-uncle Oswald resolutely. “In any case, I find my eyes have been opened to His Grace’s true defects of character—”
“After all this time, I thought you must be willing to overlook the defects,” murmured the duke irrepressibly. “Don’t tell me you didn’t even notice them? I am mortified, simply mortified!”
Prudence pressed her lips together a moment, forced a bubble of laughter back down, and continued, “I cannot marry a man who is such a miserable coward—”
“Not miserable, surely. Quite cheerful at—”
“And who, moreover”—she flung him a quelling glance—“displays a deeply flippant attitude to the serious things in life.”
“One of those being Great-uncle Oswald,” the dreadful man beside her murmured. “He is frightfully serious, is he not? Could do with a bit of cheering up, in my opinion.”
Prudence spluttered as the mirth bubbled up inside her again. “Great-uncle Oswald, I find, on reflection, this man is quite unsuitable, not to mention that fact that, he, er—” She tried desperately to think of a final, clinching reason to sever her betrothal.
“Dresses like a shag bag? Is an unshaven lout?” the duke offered, under his breath.
She ignored him.
“Brandy in the morning?” he muttered.
Prudence seized on it, “A man who drinks brandy at this hour of the morning could never be the right man for me!”
Great-uncle Oswald frowned and considered her statement. “Yes, that is all very well, and I take your point.” He glared at the duke, who immediately looked crushed. So pathetically crushed, in fact, that Prudence found giggles welling up in her again. She glared severely at the wretch. The wretch winked at her.
“Don’t you dare wink at my great-niece like that, you blasted scoundrel!” snapped Great-uncle Oswald. “She is not some loose woman to be winked at by the likes of you…” He seemed suddenly to recall that this unshaven, carelessly dressed lout was a duke and added, “Er, duke or not.”
“I beg your pardon?” a soft voice said from the doorway.
Prudence and Great-uncle Oswald glanced around in surprise. In the doorway was a neatly dressed man of medium height. In many ways he was the opposite of the duke, Prudence thought. Where the duke was tall and loose-limbed and disheveled, this man was plump and square and compact. Where the duke was dark and unshaven and casually dressed to the point of carelessness, this gentleman was as neat as wax, freshly shaved, his hair perfectly coiffed, and his clothing crisp and fresh. He looked to be about thirty.
“Morning, Edward,” the duke said, grinning.
“Good morning, Gideon,” the gentleman responded. “There seems to have been a great deal of noise coming from t
his room. Could I prevail on you to explain it to me?”
“This is private business, sir,” Great-uncle Oswald began. “And I’ll thank you to—”
The gentleman ignored him. “Gideon?” he repeated.
“Hang it, sir,” Great-uncle Oswald blustered. “Who the devil do you think you are to be demandin’ explanations when I just told you it was our private business!”
The gentleman turned haughtily. “Who the devil am I?” he said in a cold voice. “I, sir, am Edward Penteith, the Duke of Dinstable, and this is my house. And who might you be?”
Chapter Four
“She’s as headstrong as an Allegory on the banks of the Nile.”
R. B. SHERIDAN
THE QUIETLY UTTERED WORDS SEEMED TO ECHO AROUND THE ROOM.
Great-uncle Oswald gaped for a moment, then spluttered, “Wha—! What the devil d’ye mean you are the Duke of Dinstable?”
The neatly dressed man merely raised an eyebrow, but it was the sort of gesture one could only inherit from generations of haughty-browed ducal ancestors. Great-uncle Oswald needed no further convincing. “Then who the deuce is this smoky knave?” he demanded angrily.
The duke raised his eyebrow again. “Allow me to present my cousin, Lord Carradice. And you are…?”
“Lord Carradice!” exclaimed Great-uncle Oswald, goggling in horror. “Lord Carradice? Why, I—I’ve heard of you!”
Lord Carradice bowed. It was a perfectly correct bow, thought Prudence, annoyed, yet it conveyed all sorts of other things—mockery, indifference, amusement. How dare he bow at her great-uncle like that. How dare he trick her! She frowned at him.
“Delighted to meet—”
Great-uncle Oswald cut him off. “Delighted, nothing, sirrah! I’ve heard all about you—you’re nothing but a rake! A scoundrel! A blackguard of the worst sort!”
“You have heard of me,” murmured Lord Carradice, with every evidence of delight, and he bowed again.
Prudence squashed an impulse to giggle at such disgraceful behavior. She glared at him again.
“How dare you deceive me as to your true identity!” Great-uncle Oswald turned to the duke. “Do you realize, Your Grace, that this—this—”
“Scoundrel,” offered Lord Carradice helpfully. “Shag bag. Unshaven lout. Cad. Smoky knave.”
“This unmitigated reprobate,” continued Great-uncle Oswald, undeterred, “had the temerity to introduce himself to me—here in this very room!—by your own title.”
The duke glanced at his cousin in inquiry.
“Actually, I didn’t,” Lord Carradice said gently.
“But—” began Great-uncle Oswald.
Lord Carradice held up a hand. “Ungentlemanly as it may be, I must point out that it was your great-niece who introduced us.” He turned to Prudence. “Miss Merridew? You have the floor, I think.” His eyes met hers with wicked amusement, belying the earnest, reproachful manner he had adopted.
The wretch! Prudence gripped her reticule hard. He was positively delighting in embarrassing her. He had led her most cunningly down the garden path, and was taking quite obvious delight in watching her flounder in her tangled web. That fact that she deserved it didn’t make her any less annoyed. She longed to throw something at his handsome face.
No wonder he had been not the slightest bit perturbed when she explained the false betrothal ruse to him. He’d known all along he couldn’t possibly be implicated—not as the Duke of Dinstable. He’d known that she’d be made to look the veriest simpleton, the most complete nincompoop! Oh, what a fiend! He could have warned her, could have explained, but no! He’d only compounded her errors with his silence.
Two can play at that game, my lord. What had the duke called him? Gideon, yes, that was it. His first name was Gideon.
She blinked innocently back at Lord Carradice and said in a soft, puzzled voice, “But Gideon, dear, I do not understand.” She allowed her voice to falter. “You mean you are not really the duke? And this gentleman is?” She gave the real duke a brave little smile of piteous bewilderment. “But why would you—” She broke off artistically.
There was another short silence in the room as its occupants absorbed the implications of this speech. Too late, Prudence realized that her temper had led her into a worse case than before.
“Oh, vile deceiver!” Great-uncle Oswald leaped to his feet. “How dare you dupe an innocent gel in such an appallin’ manner! Flyin’ under false colors, you cowardly impostor! What a shockin’ humbug! To try to dazzle an unworldly child by laying claim to a rank not your own—”
“Child?” interrupted the Duke of Dinstable.
“Sixteen, she was, when this blackguard first tried his bamboozlin’ ways upon her! Sixteen!”
The duke looked at Gideon.
Unconcerned, Gideon pulled out a slender sheaf of papers from his coat pocket. He broke the seals and thumbed quickly through them, feigning complete indifference to the discussion at hand. He was enjoying the role of the callous heartbreaker. For once, he was innocent of all accusations. Not that he ever dallied with innocents; it was one of his rules. And he doubted he had ever broken anyone’s heart. The ladies he dallied with bore little evidence of a heart.
He darted a quick look at Miss Merridew, and his amusement deepened. A most unusual female. Gently bred and, he thought, a true innocent, despite her brazenness in entering a strange gentleman’s house and claiming a secret betrothal with him. Or perhaps because of it. No truly worldly female would have the temerity to try such a simple ruse. He had no idea what bizarre game she was playing, but there was no denying it, the whole thing was vastly amusing.
Sir Oswald shook a furious finger at him. “Use another man’s title to steal the innocent heart from a maiden’s tender breast, would you?”
Gideon tossed the papers carelessly into the coal scuttle and regarded the maiden’s tender breasts with interest, examining their shape and fullness with great pleasure. They were hastily covered with a pair of militantly crossed arms. He lifted his gaze and met a maiden’s glaring eyeballs. Her smooth cheeks were flushed and the tender breasts were now heaving in indignation beneath their green muslin armor. A small, slippered foot tapped angrily on the parquetry floor. Gideon chuckled.
Prudence had had enough. How dare he—he—look at her in such a manner. She felt hot, breathless, excited—furious! It was time to end this disastrous charade.
“So!” she declared. “You have been deceiving me!” Unable to muster a convincing sob, she whipped out a lace handkerchief from her reticule and applied it to her eyes. “All of this time, you have been filling my ears with lies!” She drew herself up and said with immense dignity, “I cannot bear it a moment longer! You are without shame! I could not possibly wed a man of such unsteady character!”
Lord Carradice, more than her equal in the dramatic arts, slapped a tragic hand across his heart and staggered back a pace, and demonstrated wounded to the quick, in silence.
Great-uncle Oswald watched, frowning. He looked unconvinced. Prudence cast around for some way to end the matter definitively. An idea flew into her mind.
She snatched up the papers he had tossed aside so carelessly. “My letters,” she explained to her great-uncle. She turned and brandished them in Lord Carradice’s face. “You are heartless to flaunt these in my face, to treat them with such cavalier disdain. It is over, Lord Carradice! I want never to see you again!” She ripped them up and dashed them into the fire with great panache. “Oh, that I was ever foolish enough to give my heart to a rake.” The fire smoldered, then flared eagerly as the papers caught.
“Oh, no, not the billets doux. My love letters!” cried Lord Carradice in a choked voice. He leaped toward the fire and snatched in vain at the burning papers. He burned his fingers on one and dropped it with a mild curse.
Stunned, Prudence watched him. The shredded sheets of paper curled into twists of flame and ash. He couldn’t be serious. Surely they could not be real love letters she had burned? He’d just
glanced at them and cast them into a coal scuttle with a complete lack of interest. Anything thrown into a coal scuttle was meant for burning! Wasn’t it?
And yet he looked so distraught. The hollow feeling in her chest grew.
What if they were love letters? Had he tossed them in the coal scuttle as a blind, meaning to collect them later? She’d used all sorts of devious methods of hiding Phillip’s rare letters from prying eyes. Apart from one special letter that she treasured, his letters weren’t romantic: Phillip was a prosaic writer and his letters were usually a short recital of his daily activities. Even so, she’d never tossed even the dullest one into a coal scuttle.
Prudence bit her lip. Lord Carradice was staring into the fire, watching his letters burn. He looked desolated, completely crushed. Even his giveaway eyes were no longer laughing.
She groaned inwardly. Why had she ever considered this mad idea? It had seemed quite simple at the time. There must be insanity in her family. Certainly Grandpapa was…eccentric. But even he had never burst into a strange ducal residence, claimed betrothal to the duke—who was really a lord and apparently a notorious rake as well—and then burned the rake’s love letters.
Who knew, but the writer of those letters might have reformed him of his rakish behavior. Love could reform a rake, she had heard.
She thought of the one special letter Phillip had sent her. “You are the sole dream that keeps me going in this hellhole on earth.”
Any moment now, Lord Carradice would turn on her in rage, abandon his inexplicable charade, and explain her outrageous folly to her Great-uncle Oswald and the duke. And then she would have to confess all, and she knew well what would happen then: she would be sent back to Norfolk in disgrace. And then her sisters and she would never escape.
Prudence felt sick. She thought she’d come up with such a clever plan, but in fact, she had ruined everything.
Lord Carradice heaved a huge sigh. It had the effect of drawing everyone’s attention back to him. “Oh well, it was worth a try,” he said in a regretful tone.
Prudence guiltily recalled his burned fingers. Even a charred shred of love letter was better than no love letter at all.