by Lynn Kurland
“The first lord of Kenneworth,” the servant intoned. “Hubert, my lord.”
Stephen frowned at the portrait, because it seemed like the appropriate thing to do. For all he knew it had been that fool there to begin something he hadn’t been able to finish.
He followed his hoary-headed guide down the long hallway, noted the rather threadbare patches here and there in the carpet, and wondered how it was David kept the lights on. He was rumored to be a gambler, but perhaps he was better at cards than he was at attending to his floors.
He was deposited inside a surprisingly opulent room. His personal valet rose immediately from his position by the fire, book in hand. Stephen smiled at the man who had been keeping him not only well dressed but organized for the better part of his life.
“Wodehouse?”
“A rather interesting time-travel romance, actually,” Humphreys said, folding back the sedate dust jacket to reveal an obviously new paperback. “Mrs. Jane Fergusson gave it to me the last time I accompanied you to Scotland, but I haven’t had the chance to give it the proper attention until this afternoon. It was written, I believe, by Laird MacLeod’s wife, Elizabeth. One of her earlier works, it would seem.”
“She has works?” Stephen asked in surprise.
“Apparently.”
“Well, the winters in Scotland are long,” Stephen offered.
“And their family tree is simply bursting with paranormal oddities,” Humphreys said, straight-faced. “Unlike the de Piagets’, of course.”
Stephen flinched in spite of himself at the memory of a recent evening in his study, but Humphreys apparently didn’t notice. Not that he would have been surprised. He’d had his share of encounters with boo-bellowing ghosties in the darkened hallways of Artane.
Humphreys set aside his book. “Your clothing is prepared, my lord. Shall you dress for supper now?”
What Stephen wanted to do was put his feet up and have a closer look at what his valet was reading, but obviously duty awaited. He thanked his man for his pains, then took himself off to the loo to wash off the evidence of his journey.
He put on what Humphreys had selected for him without comment. He supposed his own tastes had been molded over the years by what had been laid out for him, but Humphreys did have an excellent eye for clothes, so perhaps that had been a good thing.
He didn’t, however, refuse a moment or two to simply sit by the fire and gather his thoughts as Humphreys tidied the chamber. He watched for a moment, then cleared his throat.
“I don’t suppose,” he began carefully, “that you would know where the other guests have been placed.” He looked at his valet innocently. “Just to satisfy my curiosity, of course.”
Humphreys walked over to the desk and produced a large sheaf of paper from under the blotter. He laid it down and looked at Stephen.
“Something like this, my lord?”
Stephen heaved himself out of the chair and crossed the room. There on the desk lay a schematic of Kenneworth House with names of guests penciled in where they had apparently been placed for the duration. Stephen shot Humphreys a look.
“I won’t ask where you got this.”
“That might be wise.”
“Or why.”
“Even wiser, my lord.”
Stephen studied the map and was unsurprised to find himself staying in the room adjacent to Irene Preston’s. What did surprise him, however, was to see that the three women who had texted him before the party to assure themselves that he would indeed be there with bells on were all in a tidy row to the south of his bedroom. He could only imagine the gauntlet he would be required to walk each night if he were to exit his chamber at an unfortunate hour.
He studied the map for another long moment, then frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t see Miss Alexander listed here.” He started to speak, then it occurred to him that perhaps David had assumed she would be staying with him.
It was surprising how quickly a blinding anger could overcome a man when he was least expecting it.
“I believe there was a last-minute shuffle,” Humphreys said carefully.
Stephen looked at him sharply. “A last-minute shuffle?”
“So I understand.”
“Why do I have the feeling I’m not going to like where this is going?”
Humphreys clasped his hands behind his back. “I have the feeling, my lord, that you’re going to be highly displeased. I would have of course inserted myself into events to the extent I was able, but I feared to ruffle any Kenneworth feathers.”
“Leaving the ruffling to me,” Stephen said sourly.
“Your ability to obtain your desired ends with grace and diplomacy, my lord, is legendary.”
Stephen laughed a little in spite of himself. “And I learned most of it from you, I daresay.”
Humphreys only inclined his head modestly. “As you say, my lord.”
“Do you think you could find out where Miss Alexander is staying without ruffling any feathers?”
“Of course, my lord.”
“And I need you to do some investigating about another thing that puzzles me.”
Humphreys did everything short of putting on a black bowler hat and drawing a monocle from his jacket pocket. He lifted his eyebrow inquiringly. “Investigating, my lord?”
“I’m curious about a certain guest,” Stephen said, when he thought he could say it casually.
“Our Miss Alexander, I presume.”
Stephen nodded. “I’m wondering who invited her,” he said slowly and rather unwillingly. “It seems rather … unusual.”
“Because she is an American?”
“That, and I wasn’t aware she was so well acquainted with the Duke of Kenneworth as to merit his personal invitation.”
“I believe he encountered her at Lord Payneswick’s weekend earlier in the month. Rumor has it the duke was quite smitten.”
Stephen didn’t ask where Humphreys had heard that rumor and he didn’t dare comment on what he thought of His Grace’s amorous proclivities. He just knew hell would freeze over before he left Peaches alone with the snake.
Stephen looked at Humphreys. “I’m worried that I don’t see her on this map.”
“I understand completely, my lord.”
“I’ll leave you to unraveling the mystery of it, then.”
“Have a pleasant evening, my lord.”
“I will,” Stephen assured him, though he imagined he wouldn’t. It looked to him as if Peaches had been shuffled completely out of the house, though he couldn’t imagine David would be pleased by that if luring her up to his bedroom was his goal.
Then again, David likely didn’t concern himself with housekeeping matters. Neither did his mother, the dowager Duchess of Kenneworth. She was a lovely woman, but made it her habit to steer clear of her children. Stephen knew that only because Raphaela Preston was a very good friend of his mother’s, all feuding aside. Stephen suspected that Irene had been the one making the arrangements, which left him rather worried indeed.
But it wasn’t as if he could go knocking on every door himself to see where Peaches was being housed. He would leave that up to Humphreys and go make nice for the evening. At least the evening was just the overture before the true opera began. With any luck, he would find half the players hadn’t yet arrived and he wouldn’t have to watch his own back so closely quite yet.
He found himself escorted downstairs by the same geriatric guardian who had led him up those stairs, and the descent was no more speedy than the ascent. Goggling over the ancestors was his lot again, and he did it with enthusiasm, to tell his father what he’d seen, if for no other reason. Lord Edward would have been supremely satisfied to find that protruding ears and a snout nose had run rampant in the family for generations. How David had managed to avoid the full manifestation of either, Stephen couldn’t have said.
He was turned loose in a dining room that had been set up not for supper but a buffet wholly inadequate to doing anything more than
making him wonder if Humphreys could find the pantry and pillage the contents later.
He spent a very unpleasant hour trying to balance a plate of inedible hors d’oeuvres—David should most definitely replace his chef—and negotiate the minefield that was his complicated social life. Peaches hadn’t arrived yet, which worried him, but perhaps she had decided to take supper in her room. He wished he could have joined her.
He wasn’t sure he was equal to identifying all the players gathered there, but he supposed he might as well identify the hazards—especially the trio of girlfriends he was going to have to manage. He decided to dispense with reminding himself of their familial connections simply because those connections didn’t matter. The women were daughters of dukes, uniformly well-heeled, and all very much enamored of the trappings of his title and the glittering guests at his grandmother’s regular soirees.
In him personally, he supposed, they were rather less interested, unless his Rolls and a few paparazzi were involved.
He considered the least dangerous of the lot first. Her name was Zoe, and she was dim enough that he suspected she had been at the dye bottle once too often and bleached not only her locks, but her brain as well. She loved his grandmother’s parties and only pouted when he had other commitments. He wasn’t sure she could even spell medieval, much less give any details about the time period.
Brittani, who sported stunning dark hair and an absolutely flawless face, possessed a personality that would have made vampires hike up their cloaks and tiptoe away whilst she remained peacefully and safely asleep. She especially loved his Rolls, trendy eateries in London, and his excellent seats in Drury Lane. She had read English Literature in college and could carry on a very interesting conversation when it suited her, which it rarely did. Stephen suspected that she would have agreed to marry him if he’d asked, but that would have required her to tell her Italian lover to set sail for other shores. Stephen had no fear that he would ever be standing before a priest with her.
The final woman in that trio of harpies was Victoria, who would have done her namesake proud. She didn’t merely enjoy his preferred seating or taste in music or tickets to the opera, she carried on as if his lifestyle and the luxuries associated with it were her due. She was a dark blonde, he suspected, but he wasn’t about to ask her the truth of it. He couldn’t say any of his outings with her were enjoyable, but of the three, her pedigree pleased his grandmother the most so he endured her company to buy familial peace.
Really, he was going to have to put his foot down with the old woman at some point—and he wasn’t talking about Victoria.
Things became quite a bit more dangerous when Irene spotted him and came to see how he fared. She was obviously a woman with a steel spine because she ignored Zoe and Brittani and simply smiled pleasantly at Victoria. If Stephen hadn’t been more frightened of her than the other three combined, he might have admired her pluck.
She was very lovely in a pale-haired, fair-skinned, conservatively dressed way that he would have admired had it not been for the fact that he was rather too acquainted with a reputation that rather ruined the whole picture. She was, he had heard, particularly vicious to those whom she felt had slighted her and very vocal about ruining their reputations. Stephen didn’t care for how often she seemed to find herself in the paper for this or that, but it wasn’t for him to say how she conducted her affairs.
It was for him, however, to say how he conducted his own. Despite her numerous and not-very-subtle advances, he was not about to be entangled in her elegant and sophisticated tendrils.
“Enjoying yourself, Haulton?” she asked, gliding to a stop next to him.
“Immensely,” he said politely. “It is a pleasure to see you in a setting that befits your beauty.”
“Aren’t you droll,” she said with a bit of bite to her tone that made him unaccountably uneasy. “I don’t see your bedraggled chauffeur here. Perhaps she’s still drying out.”
“Perhaps,” Stephen said with a shrug. He had the distinct feeling he would be doing Peaches no favors by directing any of Irene’s attention her way. She would garner enough of it, he imagined, if she found herself in David’s company too often. “Lovely buffet you have here.”
“Supper arrangements were changed without my knowledge,” Irene said, “which unfortunately leaves you unable to enjoy my company at table. Perhaps tomorrow things will turn out differently.”
He inclined his head. “It would be my pleasure to discuss the upcoming delights your brother has planned for the weekend with you first thing tomorrow over kippers and toast.”
She only lifted a pale eyebrow before she turned and walked away. He didn’t dare speculate on who had caught her attention, but he suspected it was Kenneworth’s head butler, who was currently overseeing the buffet. Stephen hoped for his sake that he hadn’t been the one to decide against a sit-down affair.
For himself, he was merely relieved to catch the eye of a passing servant and hand off his untouched plate. Four landmines in the room, and he’d only managed to avoid the worst of the lot—
“I’ll keep you safe, if you like.”
Stephen was certain he’d jumped, but perhaps he’d managed to hide his surprise better than he’d hoped. He looked next to him to find Andrea Preston standing there.
He stretched himself to come up with the connections that would have allowed Andrea to find herself running in Irene’s lofty social circle without supervision, but apart from her being Irene’s cousin, the best he could do was her being the youngest daughter of a very minor baron, the seventh, he thought, of some obscure village that consisted of a petrol station, a church turned into leisure center, and a cluster of very old row houses that abutted some extremely worn and poached fragments of an equally obscure and minor border keep.
Or something like that.
He had encountered her several times over the past handful of years, found her to be a polite and undemanding table companion, and rather more sensible than he would have supposed considering the friends she kept. He smiled politely.
“Do I need to be kept safe?” he asked.
She laughed lightly. “Oh, I think so. I’ve been watching the room.”
“And how have you found the view?”
“Very nice,” she said, “but I’m not the stag being hunted by every woman who possesses a pulse. And just so you don’t worry, I don’t include myself in that company.”
“I believe I should be offended.”
“Oh, no, you shouldn’t,” she said cheerfully. “You’re too lofty for me.”
Stephen smiled ruefully. “Oh, it’s all rubbish, isn’t it? But I’m sure you know that already.”
She only shrugged and smiled before she turned with him to watch for any untoward stampedes. He found himself thinking kindly of her simply because she had been kind to Peaches.
It also might be useful to have another pair of eyes on the field of intrigue, especially a pair of eyes that wasn’t looking his way. He leaned back against the wall and scanned the group of very well-dressed partygoers.
“Oh, my,” Andrea breathed. “Oh, dear.”
Stephen followed the general direction of her gaze, then closed his eyes briefly at the sight of the new addition to the room.
It was Peaches, looking rather worse for wear.
He wasn’t sure where she had unearthed her clothes from, or why there hadn’t been an iron to be found, but all signs pointed to an outfit that should have been consigned to the nearest rubbish bin.
He was rather disgusted with himself that his first thought was that she hadn’t a clue how to dress properly for a social function. He attempted to redeem himself by latching on to his second thought, which was there had never been a woman more in need of a rescue. And given that no one else in the room was doing anything more than simply looking at her, he was obviously the one to execute the same.
Though he supposed he would be wise to do so silently.
There was no sense in adding to
what he could see was going to be a rather miserable evening for her.
Chapter 7
Peaches could safely say she was not feeling like the belle of the ball at the moment.
In fact, she wasn’t sure if she would have felt any more conspicuous if she’d arrived in her underwear. At least her underwear was dry and relatively unwrinkled. She certainly couldn’t say the same about her clothes.
She could say that she wasn’t convinced that her maid hadn’t been plotting to ruin her evening. After she’d unthawed her extremities under some very lukewarm water in a loo that would have benefitted from a good scrubbing, she had returned to her room to find that Betty had unpacked all her things and distributed them around the room to dry, though in a rather haphazard fashion. The resemblance to her college dorm room had been slightly comforting, but seeing everything in its less-than-pristine state had left her choosing the least objectionable of what she had and hoping it would be good enough.
Obviously she had chosen amiss.
“Let me show you to the buffet, miss,” said a voice at her side.
She looked to find a youngish maid there, looking at her with her eyes watering. Peaches wasn’t sure if she was laughing or if the smell of wet wool sweater was overpowering the poor girl. Peaches was half tempted—actually, closer to 99 percent tempted—to turn and run away. Then she managed to identify in the sea of faces one that she recognized.
Stephen de Piaget, looking grave.
Perhaps that was the expression he wore when he was trying not to bray out a laugh about the faults and foibles of a woman he thought only intelligent enough to identify the ingredients going into her compost.
And if he was going to look at her that way, she absolutely wasn’t going to give up.
Unfortunately, he was starting across the room toward her. Her only hope was to escape, and she decided her best avenue of escape was to go with the maid who was stifling without success her giggles. Hopefully some supper in her hand would give her courage to face the crowd.