The Straight-Laced Duke Selbourne

by Kasey Michaels

  “You’d be Ryland, wouldn’t you?” Sophie asked as she climbed all the way to the top of the stairs, then leaned down to rub sympathetically at Bram’s abused forehead as he remained rooted to the third step from the flagway. “Bobbit told me about you. You’re cousins, yes? Why, you know, even in this half-light I believe I can see the family resemblance. Something about the very fine shape of your chins.”

  I’ll kill her, Bramwell thought as the full import of what had happened, what was happening, was brought home to him. There had been no need for either of them to have been skulking about all evening, playing at housebreakers. A thoroughly dazzled Bobbit was firmly in Sophie’s irresistible thrall, Sophie held the butler equally firmly in her affection—and Bobbit knew Ryland. Was bloody related to the Sidmouth butler! It would have been a simple matter for Bobbit to hand the snuffbox to Ryland, and for Ryland to replace it.

  But it wouldn’t have been half the fun.

  He deposited the double strand of pearls in the butler’s outstretched hand, following it with a gold coin he pulled from his pocket. “You have my thanks, Ryland,” he said as the butler bowed, accepting both.

  Bramwell then grabbed Sophie’s elbow and began dragging her back toward the shadows... just as he heard a loud slamming sound above them... and just as Isadora’s coachman turned the horses around the small Square in order to exit it, and he caught a glimpse of his betrothed sitting, wide-eyed and openmouthed, gawking at the pair of them.

  After all, we’re living under the same roof.

  Getting me alone, day or night—anytime at all—

  could hardly be more convenient, yes?

  — Sophie Winstead

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was nearly three o’clock in the morning before Sophie had bathed, pulled on a soft cotton shift and dressing gown and allowed Desiree to brush her hair dry as they sat together before the fireplace.

  Once her maid and dearest friend had said goodnight, Sophie, knowing she couldn’t possibly sleep now, wandered about the candlelit bedchamber, picking up the odd ornament and putting it down again, before finally settling herself on the deep window embrasure that looked out over the Square. She had already gone over the events of the evening with Desiree, the two of them giggling like schoolgirls about Giuseppe’s escapades, Lord Sidmouth’s inopportune arrival, poor Bramwell’s seeming inability to keep his head clear of the wrought-iron railing, Ryland’s providential appearance to save them at the last possible moment.

  It was only when she’d nervously told Desiree about Isadora Waverley’s unexpected presence on the scene that Sophie had turned solemn, questioning. “It’s probably all for the best, Desiree,” she’d ended consideringly, “I’ve known since the very beginning that she and Bram weren’t suited to each other. But now I wonder. Did I throw her at Lord Anston’s head to help her, or to help me? Because she’s sure to cry off from the betrothal tomorrow.”

  “Ah, chérie,” Desiree had told her. “They would never have wed happily in any case. From the moment I first saw the duke watching you, I knew this. Just by being alive, by breathing, you doomed that mismatched pair to finding their own, deeper and separate happiness. This is no sin, oui? This Mademoiselle Waverley, she would have been crushed to have the duke reject her. But now? Now he can allow her to go to her happiness, as he goes to his. You have done a good thing, Sophie. Your heart, your intentions, were pure.”

  “Perhaps,” Sophie had answered, feeling guilty heat rushing into her cheeks. “But I might also have been thinking of myself—just a little, yes?”

  Desiree had given one of her most eloquent, Gallic shrugs. “This is life, oui? And it ends happily, even for me. It makes the heart light, to believe in love again. I did once before, you know. In Paris. Bah! That was long ago, and this is no night for ancient stories. It is your turn now, chérie. Your maman, she was right. I was wrong. It is the men who were wrong. Ah, but to find the right one? She did, at last, I know that now and thank le bon Dieu for it. And now, ma petite, so have you found this right man. In the end, nothing else matters, oui?”

  Now, remembering those words, Sophie sighed, pulling her knees up to her chin and hugging her legs, so that her bare feet stuck out from beneath the hem of her dressing gown. “Never to be alone,” she whispered into the night outside her window. “Never to be lonely. This is why I was born. Why I’m living. To love Bram, to have him love me.” She sighed again, and smiled, and laid her cheek against her knees. “You must have done something right in your life, Sophie Winstead. To be so blessed.”

  He was bathed, shaved, and dressed only in fresh hose, gray-green trousers, and a flowing white shirt, sans neckcloth. He had done without the services of Reese, not only because he was able, but because the less the nervous valet knew, the better it would be for him. Clandestine affairs made the man nervous, and not, Bramwell knew, without good reason.

  He traveled the darkened corridors on stockinged feet, turned the last corner that led to Sophie’s guest chamber, and laid a hand on the door latch.

  And then he stopped, reflected on what he was about to do.

  Technically, he was betrothed, all but married in the eyes of the English courts, if not God. Technically, what he was about to do was to enter a virginal bedchamber and lay claim to a young woman without benefit of clergy. Technically, he was about to make—he believed, hoped, prayed—a willing Sophie Winstead his.

  She said she’d begun to believe in love, even after all she’d seen of her mother’s unhappiness. She’d even teased him unmercifully with her new opinions on love, hinting that she loved him, that she knew he loved her. She said she’d realized that not all men were like the uncles, who had broken her mother’s heart, who had said they believed in love but only wished to indulge their own lust. She’d cried in happiness when she’d learned that his father had truly loved her mother, had planned to spend the rest of his life with her.

  And he’d been right in at least one of his own assumptions. Love did make fools of men. What he hadn’t understood was that, with the right woman, a man could be a most willing fool, and content to be foolishly happy and well loved every day and night for as long as he lived. It had taken Sophie, silly, wise, wonderful Sophie, to teach him that.

  Oh, yes. There would be tears. Perhaps even moments of anger. Ha! With Sophie’s temper, how could there not be? But, beneath it all, the love would be there. The memories of laughter, the hope that the sun would shine again, the willingness to be with that one special woman, in the good times, through the sad times—for all time.

  And if that one special, perfect woman came to him with a loose-beaked parrot, a larcenous monkey, and a conniving maid—well, what of it? He’d take Sophie Winstead rich, poor, sick, well, dressed in diamonds or lying on damp cobblestones, pulling on his ears.

  Everything he hadn’t known he needed awaited him on the other side of that door. He’d privately acknowledged that from the first. Even now, every time he looked at her he was once again caught unawares, shaken out of what he believed to be his well-ordered life as he saw the promise in her eyes. She was a dozen different women, and he’d at last realized he couldn’t live without a single one of her. This was surrender. Complete and unconditional.

  “Yes, yes, yes, Bramwell Seaton. You’re the luckiest man in the universe, and good on you. So the reason you’re standing outside her bedchamber instead of being inside it with her, would be...?” he asked himself out loud.

  Just before he depressed the latch and stepped inside.

  My dear, my dear, you never know when

  any beautiful young lady may not

  blossom into a Duchess!

  — Maria, Marchioness of Ailesbury

  Chapter Fifteen

  Bramwell walked into the drawing room and planted a kiss on his aunt’s cheek on his way to the drinks table, offering to pour her a glass of wine.

  “I don’t really imbibe this early in the day—is that the correct word, dear? Imbibe? But I will say t
hat you look rather happy. No, more than happy. You’re positively glowing.”

  Bram frowned. “Well, that’s not good, is it?” he asked, winking at Lady Gwendolyn. “I think I should be looking guilty, and quite sad.”

  His aunt put down Mrs. Farraday’s yarn—the ball of soft yellow wool she had been about to stuff up her sleeve—and turned to look at her nephew. “I don’t understand. Why should you be looking guilty? I was the one who read the journals, and then told Amelia Crossley that business about that MacLeish person and Constance Winstead. But that’s all I said, I promise you that. I’ve racked my brain, and racked it again, and I’m sure that’s all I said.” She spread her hands, as if loosing a captured pigeon to the skies. “And the rest of it I’ve ordered to simply fly out of my mind!”

  “I can’t tell you how that gratifies me, Aunt,” Bramwell said, sipping from his glass. “However, if you don’t want to have to forget something else, you might want to find something to do in the morning room or elsewhere for a while. Isadora wrote in her note that she’d be here now, saving me a trip to Mount Street, and her coach just drew up out front. I think our conversation should remain private.”

  Lady Gwendolyn nodded. “Yes, dear. Desiree already told me. You’re going to let her toss you over even though you really want to throw her away.” Both hands flew up to cover her mouth as her eyes grew wide and panicked. “Did I say that? I didn’t mean to say that. That is, I mean that I didn’t mean for you to know that I knew that, and that I knew that I shouldn’t say... well, that. Not that I know that. Or should. I mean. That is. Um. Oh, what do I mean? Bramwell, don’t just stand there, laughing—help me!”

  Bramwell helped his aunt to her feet, figuring that was as good a place to start as any. “It’s all right. I know just what you mean, Aunt,” he said soothingly, all the time guiding her toward the door. “But we will have to have a few more conversations on the subject of discretion, I believe.”

  “Oh, my goodness, yes! I really think we should. Definitely.” The knocker went, and Lady Gwendolyn all but up jumped out of her skin as she picked up her skirts and headed for the staircase leading to the bedchambers. “I’m gone, I’m gone! Bobbit—” she called out, leaning over the railing in order to see down into the foyer, “don’t you dare move one step toward that door until I’m gone!” Then she paused on the first step, her hand on the newel post, and turned to Bramwell. “I like your smile, Nephew. It’s good to see it.”

  “Thank you, Aunt Gwen,” he told her departing back, then started toward the door to the drawing room, motioning for Bobbit, standing below in the foyer, to answer the knock.

  He counted to twenty, then stepped out into the hallway once more, just as Isadora was climbing the last stair to the first floor, her abigail left behind in the foyer. Obviously this was going to be a very brief visit.

  “Selbourne,” Isadora said, her voice more clipped than usual. She inclined her head slightly as he bowed over her hand, his lips missing her gloved fingers by a good inch or more. “We must talk.”

  “I know,” he answered, leading her toward the nearest couch, then sitting down beside her. “I had wanted to come to you, but I had other business to attend to first, I’m afraid. However, before we begin, I have to tell you that it was entirely my fault. Sophie had absolutely nothing to do with anything. It was—”

  “Sophie? Selbourne, stop, you’re confusing me. What does dear Sophie have to do with anything? And you really shouldn’t be so informal, referring to her by her Christian name.”

  Isadora stripped off her gloves, a precise pull on each of her fingertips, one after the other, accomplishing the feat with admirable grace. “Lud, I don’t know when I’ve been this nervous, upset. Charles wanted to come here with me, but I refused, of course. This is my burden, I told him, and I must carry it alone. It’s the Waverley way.”

  She laid her gloves in her lap and looked at Bramwell, her eyes eloquent with a message he was damned if he could read. “Selbourne, I have done you a great disservice, and I cannot, therefore, in good conscience marry you. There! I’ve said it. Lud, that was difficult!”

  Bramwell’s mind was all but stumbling over itself in its rush to understand what in the devil Isadora was saying. She had done him a great disservice? “Isadora, I’m sorry,” he said, seeing that her usually alabaster cheeks were chalk white, that her bottom lip had begun to tremble. Not that she would cry. Lord, no. Waverleys didn’t cry. “You’re obviously overset, Isadora. It’s I who owe you my deepest apologies.”

  But she wouldn’t let him speak, seemed determined not to let him speak. “Lud, Selbourne! You, apologize to me? When I felt my heart leap in my breast when I’d learned you wanted to cry off from Lady Buxley’s party last night, leave me with my evening free to make... to make... lud! To make a fool of you, Selbourne. There is no way to dress this up in clean linen. I betrayed you, Selbourne. Lud, I’m such a wretched, wretched woman!”

  Bramwell opened his mouth to correct her, to say that it was he, not she, who should be begging forgiveness. But then it dawned on him. All at once a blinding flash of lightning lit up the entire world, and he saw, he understood. Isadora had decided how this interview would go, and he would be a cad not to allow it, even if he didn’t understand it.

  “How did you betray me last night, Isadora?” he asked quietly, fishing in his pocket for his handkerchief. For he’d been wrong. Waverleys did cry. At least this one did.

  Isadora dabbed at her eyes, blew her nose, then went to return the handkerchief, which Bramwell smilingly refused to accept. “I—I had been having second—second thoughts. For days. Horrible thoughts. Unworthy of a duchess, of your duchess. I was ashamed, Selbourne. If I had loved you—if you had meant the world and all to me, I should have survived it. The gossip, the old scandal that reached out to touch me wherever I turned.”

  She needed to resort to the handkerchief again, as her nose had begun to run in earnest now. It was rather wonderful, though, seeing Isadora as a real woman, and not just as the perfect wife for a duke, which was how he’d previously seen her. She leaned toward him, looking at him earnestly. “Do you love me, Selbourne? I don’t think you do.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her damp cheek. “You’re right, Isadora. I don’t love you. But I’m finding that I like you much more than I would have believed a week ago. But you love someone, don’t you? Do you want to tell me about him? I believe you mentioned someone named Charles?”

  For the following ten minutes Bramwell’s only function was to serve as a willing pair of ears while Isadora spoke of Lord Charles Allston and his daughters, Sarah, Mary, Lucy, and Ruth something-or-other. How kind Charles was, how she’d remembered him so fondly from years ago, how they’d met unexpectedly after she’d seen him come to visit Miss Winstead, and how their friendship had blossomed again almost immediately. How wonderfully polite and pretty the daughters were, how very much she was needed by them, would find her utmost happiness as their friend, their mentor, their mother.

  It was all settled. She and Charles—and the girls, of course—would drive down to meet with Isadora’s father. They were leaving London that very afternoon, in less than an hour. They would then be wed in the family chapel before retiring to Lord Anston’s estate in the country until next Season, when Sarah—or was it Lucy? Bramwell was having trouble keeping the four names and various ages straight—would come to London to be presented. Everything was wonderful. Everything was settled.

  Except that Isadora was still betrothed to Bramwell. That part was still presenting just a smidgen of a problem....

  “Then, Isadora,” Bramwell ventured at last, wondering why he felt it necessary to ask, “you didn’t see me out and about last night?”

  “See you?” she repeated, her frown warning him to silence. “I don’t know to what you are referring. See you where, Selbourne? I told you. I was visiting with Charles and the girls. It all was exceedingly proper, but very private. I didn’t see anybody, barely another soul all
evening. Everyone was at Lady Buxley’s, you know. I’ve already heard it was a sad crush—extremely successful. But, now that you mention it, I did see something very strange as I was being driven away from Charles’s town house.”

  It was all a game. They were playing a game Isadora had devised for some reason he’d probably have to have Sophie explain to him, and it was his turn to move a piece. “What did you see, Isadora?”

  “Well, lud,” she supplied quickly, “it was the strangest thing. The coachman turned through the Square, the better to exit it, I suppose, as Charles’s town house is quite near the entrance. And, while he was driving around the Square, directly as we were passing by Lord Sidmouth’s residence—well, lud, Selbourne, you just won’t believe it, that’s all.”

  Bramwell’s smile was stuck to his face; he couldn’t unstick it even if he tried. “I won’t?”

  Isadora lowered her voice to a whisper. “It was Lord Sidmouth himself. Standing directly in front of one of the upstairs windows—stripped to his unmentionables! He was standing there, and then he slammed down the window. Very angrily, I’d say, as if he wasn’t pleased to have found it open. I imagine one of his servants must have done it against his orders, or some such thing. Now, don’t you think that strange?”

  “That he’d be nearly unclothed, Isadora, or that he’d close his own window?” Bramwell asked, relaxing as he remembered that there had been a loud sound from somewhere above him just as he’d dragged Sophie into the shadows.

  “Lud, Selbourne—that’s so funny!” Isadora exclaimed, giving him a playful rap on the wrist with her gloves as she stood, clearly relieved that their interview had gone so well, that he had been so cooperative. She reached into her reticule and handed him the Seaton family ring, a most imposing ruby. “Here, Selbourne. I was honored to wear this, but I find that I will be even more happy being Lady Anston than I could ever have been as the duchess of Selbourne. Lud—that was rather insulting, wasn’t it? I didn’t mean it that way, truly. I don’t know if I’m on my head or my heels since I found my dear Charles again. We just talked and talked—for hours! Oh, please, forgive me. Forgive me for everything. And say good-bye to Sophie for me, please. I owe her so much.”