The Straight-Laced Duke Selbourne

by Kasey Michaels

  “Oh, you dear, sweet thing!” Miss Waverley exclaimed, giving the child an impulsive hug as she looked to Lord Anston. “Lud, my lord, but I can see that you need some lessons in the sensibilities of gently nurtured young girls like your sweet daughters.”

  Lord, but it was simple, this making people happy. Almost laughably so. And so very satisfying. Sophie gave Sir Wallace a sly nudge in the ribs with her elbow and then took his arm as if wandering off to inspect another table of books—this one dedicated to naval tactics. “Where were you?” she asked in a whisper. “I had about given you up, you know.”

  “Miss Waverley insisted I take tea with her before we came here. Never ate so fast in m’life, I swear it. Now, what the devil are we doing? Something’s havey-cavey here, I can feel it. You’re up to something, aren’t you? All this business about leaving you and Miss Waverley here and loping off like some Johnny Raw who doesn’t know gentlemen don’t ask ladies to Hatchard’s, then abandon them there. I like you, Miss Winstead, I truly, truly do. But sometimes you make me want to start carrying a flask about with me again, I swear you do.”

  “Oh, you dear, sweet thing!” Sophie said in imitation of Miss Waverley as she patted his cheek, then winked at him. “As things are going even better than I had dared to hope, let’s see if this helps to give you some idea of what I’m about, all right? Here’s a hint. Do you care to wager on just how long it will be before Lord Anston comes up to us and offers to escort Miss Waverley home? I’ll give him ten minutes.”

  “What? Is that what this is about? Oh, it is, it is! I’ve seen matchmaking before, and this is just the sort of thing matchmaking people do. You’re throwing Miss Waverley at Anston’s head, aren’t you? Straight at it—wham! And you stuck me smack in the middle of it, too. Why, of all the sneaky, devious”—he looked over his shoulder at a smiling Lord Anston—“five’s more likely, I’ll wager,” he then ended confidently, shaking his head as he grinned at her. “Yes, five minutes, no more. Do you think he knows Miss Waverley is Bram’s intended?”

  “Do you really think he cares?” Sophie countered, picking up a thick tome having to do with Nelson’s strategies at Trafalgar. “Or that Miss Waverley cares?”

  Sir Wallace turned so sharply, throwing another look toward the place where Lord Anston and Isadora Waverley were now deep in conversation, that Sophie had to pull on his neckcloth to bring him back to attention. “Never be obvious, Sir Wallace,” she warned. “Now, as it probably isn’t in the least ladylike of me to wager anyway, I should consider it a kindness if you were to step on my hem as I move away. Aim for the lowest ruffle, just here, on my left side, if you please. I’m never without a second plan, you understand, in case the first should prove unwieldy.”

  “But—but I’ll rip your gown,” he protested, clearly still not understanding what she was about. Which was quite all right. He was a man, and not accustomed to subtlety. Personally, she believed Nelson might have survived Trafalgar, had he a woman on board to assist with tactics.

  “Yes, you will, won’t you. It’s already held in place by little more than a single thread, Desiree being quite good with a needle, so that you won’t have to step all that hard. And then I’ll have to go straight back to Portland Square, leaving Lord Anston either to say good-bye to a woman he is just beginning to most happily know, or offer to take her up with him when he leaves, yes? You see, I’ve decided I should totally leave her orbit for the remainder of the afternoon. Miss Sarah Anston already likes me entirely too much, and I believe I want her concentrating quite solely on Miss Waverley’s much-more-deserving charms.”

  Sir Wallace took out his handkerchief and mopped at his suddenly perspiring brow. “I don’t know, Miss Winstead. Bram might not like this, even it if does seem a good idea. Never could see him and Miss Lud making a match of it. Lorimar, neither. Gave her that name, Lorimar did. But this is rather underhanded, ain’t it?”

  “Oh, most definitely underhanded, Sir Wallace. But with all of the best intentions. For His Grace. For Miss Waverley’s happiness. Now, are you up to the game, or not?”

  He gave one last, quick look over his shoulder, then sighed. “You haven’t been wrong yet, Miss Winstead, I’ll say that for you.”

  “How true,” she said, smiling. “And, please, call me Sophie.”

  “Sophie it is,” he agreed, then screwed up his courage, closed his eyes, and stepped down hard on her hem.

  Sophie was holding up a length of ripped flounce as she stood in the foyer, thanking Bobbit for all his help in settling Sir Wallace, among his other courtesies to her, when she felt a hand close around her arm just above the elbow.

  “Come with me, Miss Winstead,” Bramwell ground out behind her from between clenched teeth, unceremoniously pulling her about and all but dragging her down the hallway toward his private study.

  She raised her eyebrows questioningly to Bobbit as she looked over her shoulder at the butler, but he just spread his arms and shook his head.

  She allowed herself to be very nearly flung into a leather wing chair as Bramwell swung around to give the door a hard shove closed with his outstretched arm, then plop himself down on the desk, glaring at her.

  Goodness, but he was being masterful, although Sophie was fairly certain he hadn’t dragged her in here in order to kiss her again, more was the pity. Because she really very much would like to have him kiss her again, tell her again how he might, just might, be in love with her. She remembered Desiree’s warning to behave herself, sighed once in regret, then succumbed to an urge to tease Bramwell anyway. “I suppose asking if you’d like me to pour you a glass of wine would be the height of folly, yes? And a kiss, I’m nearly convinced, is totally out of the question?”

  “Don’t be dazzling, Sophie, if you don’t mind,” Bramwell warned tightly even as he looked at her with what she assured herself was more than a smidgen of longing. She watched, smiling, as he ran a hand through his hair, mussing it quite adorably even as he bit out, “We’ve got bigger problems at the moment.”

  “Bigger than the fact that you, a betrothed man, kissed me last night? Really, Bramwell? And I had thought—” She broke off, shrugging, feeling very much in command of this situation, which was a pleasant change from their interlude the previous evening. “Then last night meant nothing to you, yes? I mean nothing to you?”

  “Ah, you mean something to me, Sophie,” he responded, his expression fairly bleak, and yet curiously amused—a very confusing mix. And doubly adorable. “You mean that I haven’t had a comfortable night’s sleep since I first learned of your existence. You mean that I have drunk more wine in these last days than I have in the past six months. You mean that I’m looking at my life and learning things about it and my friends that both enlighten and infuriate me. You mean that I have found myself in the position of being both the happiest and most hopeful of men while at the same time believing I might have been better off to have drowned when my second-to-last ship went down off the coast of Spain. But that isn’t why we’re, here.”

  He was happy? Hopeful? Happiness and hope flared in Sophie as well. Hearing Bramwell so close to incoherent gave her confidence yet another small boost, and she settled herself more comfortably into the chair. Maybe, as she was beginning to believe, as he had told her last night, there was such a thing as true love. And maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t entirely confined to the female of the species—perhaps the odd gentleman or two were capable of the emotion. Like Bramwell Seaton. “Then you’re glad you kissed me?” she asked, unable to keep the womanly satisfaction out of her voice.

  “It has always amazed me how a woman will push and push at a man when the man obviously doesn’t want to discuss something. Glad, Sophie? How could I be glad about it? I’m not glad about it, no,” he answered flatly. “It was the wrong thing to do. Definitely.”

  “Oh,” Sophie said quietly, her new confidence not quite up to surviving such a deflating statement. “I see.”

  “No, damn it, you don’t see! I wanted to kis
s you. I wanted to throw you onto the carpet in front of the fire and make love to you all the night long. I wanted it more than I would have believed I could ever want anything!” Bramwell all but shouted. “I still do, God help me. But I was stupid, wrongheaded. I put the cart before the horse.”

  “Really?” Sophie considered this for a moment, even as she fought a sudden impulse to leap to her feet and break into song—or spread her wings and fly about the room several times. As she was exquisitely aware, as Desiree had told her, timing was everything. He’d had the kiss right, he’d just had the timing wrong. That was what he was saying, wasn’t it?

  Happy tears pricked behind Sophie’s eyes as she gave up all the teachings of a lifetime, turned her back on them joyfully and walked away—and figuratively stepped forward into the arms of trust, of love. She loved Bramwell Seaton. She’d probably loved him forever, even before she’d set foot in Portland Square. And she trusted him to love her back.

  Which didn’t mean she could entirely forgive him for saying she wasn’t perfect. It was true. She wasn’t. But a man in love really shouldn’t say such things, should he?

  She decided another small bit of teasing was in order. “And which am I, then, Bram? The cart, or the horse? I imagine I’d be the cart, yes? Miss Waverley would be the horse. I don’t think that’s flattering to either of us, to be truthful about the thing. Perhaps, if you think hard on it, you could find another way to say what you mean?”

  He put his palms on the desk on either side of him and leaned toward her as she grinned up at him, even went so far as to waggle her eyebrows at him. “You’d try the patience of saint, Sophie. You know that, don’t you?”

  How wonderful this was! To feel so free to be herself, to know that she was loved, to know that she loved. How happy she and Bramwell would be, for all of their lives. “Yes, Bram,” she agreed, feeling rather full of herself, this new power, this dizzying confidence. “I do know. Do you want to kiss me again? You might have placed too much importance on the one we shared last night. And I might have a few reservations of my own, yes? Perhaps if you kissed me again...” She raised her chin another fraction, pursed her lips, and closed her eyes.

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” He pushed himself away from the desk and began to pace as Sophie bit her bottom lip to hold back a giggle.

  “Tell me more about love, Bram, please. I may not have listened all that well last night, what with objects flying around the room.”

  That stopped him mid-pace. “What?” He pressed a hand against his forehead. “How did this happen? I bring her in here to tell her something, something crucially important, and now we’re talking about love? Last night she didn’t want to hear a word about it—today, she’s asking for a seminar on the subject! I’m being dazzled, that’s what. I’ll probably spend the rest of my life not knowing if I’m on my head or on my heels. I should throw her out of here on her head right now, that’s what I should do.”

  Sophie stood up, went to the drinks table, poured him a glass of wine. Poor dear thing, he looked so harassed. She knew how he felt. This hadn’t been an easy night and day for her, either. Coming to life-altering revelations seldom was. “I understand, Bram. You have other things on your mind. But I do want to talk about this. I think we must. So I’ll begin, yes? I’ll tell you what I think. Love between a man and a woman doesn’t exist, I said. Only desire, even lust. I want to be happy, and believing oneself to be in love is the simplest, straightest route to unhappiness. I’ve said all of that, believed all of that. Definitely. But now I’m beginning to have some few second thoughts on the subject.”

  “You’re beginning to have—” He threw up his hands. “Why am I repeating everything the girl says? You certainly do pick your times, don’t you, Sophie? A man would be a bloody fool to even mention the word love around you. I certainly learned that last night, while I was dodging teapots. After all, it was you who told me that a man only speaks of love in order to get what he wants, and then leaves. That men only believe in lust, in desire. And now you’re saying—oh, no. No! We’re not going to get into this now. Not right now.”

  “But you were telling the truth last night, yes? You do believe in love, don’t you, Bram? You don’t want to, but you do. But you need me to believe in it, too,” she said, handing him the glass, which he took. “Except that I very much think you still believe it makes fools of men. It’s even probably why you betrothed yourself to dear Isadora, and why you can’t look me in the eye today.”

  “I’m very fond of Isadora!” he pronounced in a fairly impressive bellow.

  “Yes, Bram,” Sophie said reasonably. “And that’s terribly sad. For you, for Isadora. Only think of what you both are missing. Much more intelligent to look for real love, even if it makes fools of us, yes?”

  “As in your mother and my father, I suppose? Skyrocketing stark naked from a balcony isn’t exactly a sign of intelligence, Sophie,” he pointed out sarcastically. “Divorcing your wife to marry your paramour isn’t—”

  “What did you say?”

  “You didn’t know that either?” He looked away from her for a moment, muttering something under his breath, then took a deep breath and looked at her. “I found the documents in my father’s personal belongings. He had everything ready to go, just a week before he died. His solicitors had been hard at work, the wording of the petition was in place. The only reason he’d agreed to go to Buxley’s was in order to line up allies who would help him. Otherwise, and for probably every day of their marriage after I was conceived, my parents were only in the same place at the same time by unhappy accident. So, yes, Sophie, my father was on his way to very publicly divorcing his wife, obviously so that he could marry your mother. Just another Seaton scandal.”

  “I—I think perhaps I should sit down now,” Sophie said quietly, marveling at the way the room had begun to spin. He took hold of her arm and helped her to a chair as she swayed where she stood. “But he was going to leave her,” she went on, speaking out loud, but really only talking to herself. “Desiree said she found Maman crying, which proved Uncle Cesse was about to leave her, just as they all had left, all the uncles, all those times. Maman said Desiree was wrong, that she was happy, that she had a secret. Uncle Cesse was going to marry her? He wasn’t going to leave?” She looked up at Bram, her eyes swimming with happy tears. “Oh, Bram, don’t you see? This just makes it all even more clear to me, to both of us!”

  “How?”

  It was a simple question, but Sophie didn’t have a simple answer. What did it change—learning that Uncle Cesse had really, really loved her mother, had been willing to stand up to the scandal of seeking out what would be a difficult, hard-won divorce from his marriage of social convenience in order to wed his one true love? Well, for one thing, it definitely fell into the category of being the miracle of love Desiree had admitted even she still hoped to believe in even after her cynical lessons.

  But Bramwell obviously had seen his father’s intentions as just more proof that love made fools of men, that it was better to form a comfortable yet loveless alliance between social peers than to risk his heart—or lose his mind, which was probably what he thought love demanded from a man.

  She was beginning to believe she understood love. She was beginning to believe in love with as much conviction as her mother had done, and damn the consequences. She wanted love, desired love above all things, now, and forever. Bramwell’s love. Only his. In or outside of wedlock. Because that didn’t matter. It simply didn’t matter, not when she loved him so much.

  But, while she had been about to throw caution to the winds, take Bramwell anyway he wanted to take her—Goodness! She was her mother’s child—he was still caught between wanting her and his convictions of these past years, convictions built on his family’s disgrace, his father’s hey-go-mad life, that man’s scandalous death.

  Last night she had weakly joked that she and Bramwell were fools. How right she had been!

  To Bram, love still meant making
a fool of himself, because love made fools of men. And, possibly, quite probably—definitely—of women as well. It certainly had almost made a fool of her, for she’d foolishly been about to declare her love for him, offer herself to him. Just as last night he had nearly been foolish enough to admit his love for her.

  A pair of fools seemed rather fun, as her mother and Uncle Cesse had been. But to be a fool on her own? No, that didn’t sound the least bit appealing. Not to her, and obviously not to Bramwell.

  She had learned so much. They both still had so much to learn.

  So, how did one go about building a pair of happy fools? That was certainly something to think about, wasn’t it? Because she was not about to cry craven at the first hurdle and slink away. Not now. Not when she loved...

  “Sophie?” Bramwell prompted, bending down to put a finger under her chin, lift her head so that she had to meet his eyes. “Are you all right?”

  She shot him her sunniest smile, the one that crinkled up her nose and made her eyes shine. “Oh, yes,” she said with considerable gusto. “I’m simply fine, Bram. For a moment I was sad, thinking of how things might have been for Maman and Uncle Cesse. But they were happy, yes?” She patted his hand, reminding him that he still held her chin, and he let go, straightening once more and looking at her searchingly.

  “Now,” she said, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, “I think you said there was some sort of problem? Something more important than our discussion of love?”

  “Not more important, Sophie,” he said, still looking at her strangely. She really, really wished he wouldn’t look at her that way. Hungrily. Yet sadly. As if he longed to touch her, but knew he wasn’t free to do so. Yes, he still had so much to learn, poor darling. But that was all right. He loved her. He really did. Now that she understood that, she’d help him get through any remaining problems. Sophie would fix everything, just as she always did. And, if she was very lucky, they’d both have a lot of fun along the way.