How to Find a Duke in Ten Days

by Grace Burrowes

  The pen stopped moving across the page. Philomena looked up slowly. “Would that be wrong, my lord?”

  “You need not my-lord me when we are private.” More than her polite address, the caution in her eyes annoyed him.

  “Would it be wrong for me to want all my years of study and scholarship to result in accomplishing what my father could not? Would it be wrong for me to claim a small portion of the respect and deference he’s been shown his whole life?”

  Ramsdale’s every instinct told him to answer carefully. Philomena was tired, frustrated, anxious, and facing significant changes to a future she’d thought well settled.

  “I understand that ambition, Philomena, but some quests take more time than we can allot them. My regard for you does not depend on your achieving the impossible.”

  As far as Ramsdale knew, none of his fellow bibliophiles had located so much as a page of the missing manuscript.

  She stroked the quill over the cat’s nose. “Is that why you neglected to pay me today? Because you don’t think we’ll find the Duke?”

  Her gaze was as inscrutable as the damned cat’s, and Ramsdale was abruptly at sea. They were no longer employer and employee. They were a couple all but engaged. But then, a woman raised without wealth was likely incapable of treating money casually, and they were not quite engaged.

  “An oversight on my part,” Ramsdale said. “I’ll correct my error tomorrow.” He crossed the room to kiss Philomena’s cheek, though the gesture was awkward when appended to a discussion of wages.

  He left the library for the formal guest parlor. When a marquess came calling, only the formal parlor would do, of course. If Lady Maude had accompanied her dear papa, then Ramsdale was doomed to take a cup of tea.

  To his relief, only the marquess graced the pink tufted sofa in Melissa’s parlor.

  Amesbury rose, a tea cake halfway to his mouth, when Ramsdale made his bow.

  “Amesbury, a pleasure, though I’m afraid my schedule does not permit me to linger. I do hope you’ll be able to join us for dinner on Wednesday next?”

  Almack’s held its assemblies on Wednesdays, and Lady Maude would be well motivated not to linger over dinner when she might instead be waltzing. Melissa’s slight smile said she knew exactly why Ramsdale had chosen the date.

  “Dinner would be lovely,” Amesbury said, finishing his tea cake. “Just lovely, though Lady Maude and I will soon be removing to the family seat. Only a fool remains in London during summer’s heat, eh?”

  A fool or a man intent on avoiding matchmaking papas.

  “More tea, my lord?” Melissa asked, sending Ramsdale a you-owe-me glance.

  “Until Wednesday,” Ramsdale said, sketching a bow and nearly running for the door.

  Melissa was a widow, and the occasional gentleman did call upon her, though why Amesbury, who was old enough to be her godfather, would trouble himself to pay a—

  “My lord!”

  Ramsdale had been halfway down the stairs, rounding the first landing, and thus he hadn’t seen Lady Maude coming up the steps—or lurking below the landing. She clung to his arms, her grip painful as she sagged against him.

  “You gave me such a fright, sir! My heart’s going at a gallop. To think I might have tumbled to my death!”

  For pity’s sake. “Hardly that. The stairs are carpeted, my lady. I’m sure you’ll catch your breath in a moment.”

  She’d chosen her opportunity well, because this flight of stairs was in view of the front door. Callers came and went all afternoon, and somebody was bound to see her plastered to Ramsdale’s chest, panting like a hind.

  The first footman remained at his post by the porter’s nook, earning himself a raise by keeping his eyes firmly to the front.

  “You are uninjured,” Ramsdale said, trying to set the lady at a distance on the landing. “We didn’t even collide.”

  Though not for want of trying on her part.

  “But I am feeling quite faint,” she retorted, refusing to stand on her own two feet. “I vow and declare I might swoon.”

  A door clicked open below—not the front door, thank the benevolent cherubs—the library door. Philomena emerged and, of course, moved toward the stairs.

  She stopped at the foot of the steps, staring at the tableau above her.

  Ramsdale knew what she saw: her almost-betrothed with a sweet young thing vining herself around him like a vigorous strain of ivy, and not just any sweet young thing—Philomena’s titled, unmarried, younger, wealthy cousin.

  *

  Ramsdale was his usual attentive escort on the way home, and he made a few attempts at conversation, but Philomena could not oblige him.

  How sweetly Lady Maude had nestled against his lordship’s chest. How delicately she’d clung to him—and how tenaciously. Ramsdale had grumbled about presuming women and scheming misses, but to Philomena’s eye, he hadn’t been trying very hard to dislodge Lady Maude from his embrace.

  Not very hard at all.

  Thank heavens that Lady Maude had not seen Philomena gawking like a chambermaid at the foot of the steps.

  “You’re very quiet, Philomena,” Ramsdale said as they turned down the alley.

  “I’m tired, also pondering the Duke. Tomorrow I’ll make a list of the objects Hephaestus is referring to when he makes his biblical comparisons.”

  “Hang the damned Duke. I know what you think you saw, Philomena.”

  What she thought she saw? “We are not private, my lord. I am Miss Peebles to you.”

  “You will never be Miss Peebles to me again, dammit. We have been gloriously intimate, need I remind you.”

  The alley was deserted, else Philomena would have delivered his lordship a severe upbraiding for his careless words.

  “You need not remind me, nor do you need to tell me what I did see with my own eyes. A comely, eligible young lady in your embrace in a situation where you and she had every expectation of privacy.”

  “The footman was at his post in the foyer, and she was not in my embrace.”

  Philomena stopped walking long enough to spare the earl a cool perusal. Footmen were no source of chaperonage whatsoever. Even she knew that much.

  “Then Lady Maude wasn’t in your embrace, but you were certainly in hers, and it’s of no moment to me in any case. Polite society has its rules, and I grasp them well enough even if they don’t apply to me. I’ll bid you good evening, my lord.”

  Philomena had too little experience arguing to make a proper job of it. She never argued with her father, never argued with Jane. She accommodated them and then found some other way to accomplish her ends.

  With Ramsdale, that meek course would not do, even if he was an earl.

  Even if his uncle’s will did hold the key to finding the Duke.

  “Philomena, please don’t bid me farewell when we’re quarreling. Lady Maude ambushed me. I’ve stood up with her from time to time, and she’s gone two Seasons without attaching a suitor. I consider her father a friend and would not avoidably hurt a lady’s feelings.”

  Philomena did not want to have this stupid disagreement. Ramsdale owed her nothing, save for a few coins. He’d made her no promises, and even if he had, she wouldn’t have believed them.

  “I don’t seek an apology, my lord, or an explanation. I’m tired, peckish, and cross. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He put a hand on her arm. Just that, and tears threatened.

  Philomena wanted to be the only woman nestling against his chest. She wanted to wear pretty frocks that would catch his eye. She wanted her hair styled in a graceful cascade of curls artfully arranged to show off her features, not a boring old bun that also served as a pencil holder.

  “We’ll find your dratted Duke,” Ramsdale said. “The damned manuscript has put you out of sorts, but if anybody can find him, it’s you. Until tomorrow, Miss Peebles.”

  Philomena would have fallen sobbing into his arms, except he gave her cheek a lingering kiss, and that… helped. The earl had put
her out of sorts, but so had the Duke. She’d never felt this close to success, or this assured of failure.

  She’d also spoken honestly. She was exhausted from successive sleepless nights, hungry, and frustrated.

  “Until tomorrow, my lord.”

  He bowed. She curtseyed and mustered a smile.

  He touched his hat brim, and Philomena slipped through the garden gate, latching it closed behind her.

  Jane sat on the bench near the sundial, her expression as thunderous as Philomena had ever seen it.

  “Don’t you dare remonstrate with me, Jane Dobbs. I’m eight-and-twenty years of age, my father stopped seeing me as anything but a free translation service fifteen years ago, and my dealings with Ramsdale are my business. If you’ll excuse me, I haven’t had any supper.”

  She would have swept past the bench, except Jane began to slowly applaud.

  “If his lordship has finally put you on your mettle, he’ll get no criticism from me, but a certain apothecary in Knightsbridge claims you’ve found a portion of The Duke’s Book of Knowledge. They’ve put that story about to lure young ladies into buying love potions, which—I can assure you—are flying off the shelves at a great rate.”

  Chapter Eight

  ‡

  The coins on the blotter winked up at Ramsdale in a shaft of morning sunshine, while the cat silently mocked him.

  “She isn’t coming,” he informed Genesis. “Miss Peebles—I am to call her Miss Peebles—says she has an urgent matter to see to involving the Eagan Brothers’ Emporium in Knightsbridge this morning. She will resume her duties tomorrow.”

  Ramsdale set Philomena’s note—he thought of her as Philomena—before the cat, who gave it a sniff.

  Knightsbridge was a hodgepodge of shops, taverns, inns, the occasional newly built mansion, and lodging houses more famous for the highwaymen who’d bided among them than for hospitality. What would matter so much to Philomena that she’d use the next to last of the Duke’s ten days shopping and in such surrounds?

  Genesis rose from the desk, leaped down, strutted across the library, and affixed himself atop the family Bible, which was closed for once.

  “Blasphemer. Philomena is about the least-mercantile female I’ve ever met.” Unlike Lady Maude, who likely kept half the shops in Mayfair in business.

  Genesis circled twice and curled down into a perfect oval on his cushion of Holy Scripture. Ramsdale had the peculiar sense the cat was telling him to have done citing Proverbs and quoting Isaiah and go after the lady.

  “It’s a fine morning for a jaunt about Town. Guard the castle, cat. I have a countess-errant to find.”

  Purring ensued. At least somebody was having a good day.

  Ramsdale’s morning deteriorated as he cut through the park. Everywhere, couples were taking the air—happy, devoted, new couples, who had sense enough to enjoy each other’s company without the interfering presence of a chimerical Duke.

  “I must court my countess,” he muttered, crossing south into Knightsbridge proper. “I wouldn’t mind if she were to court me a bit too.”

  He would have gone on in that vein, except a dog nearly tripped him—one of the many strays running about London—and thus he looked up in time to see Philomena striding along ten yards ahead of him.

  No maid, no footman, no handy aunt. Because the next Countess of Ramsdale was once again dressed as a young man. She’d changed her walk, changed her posture, queued her hair back, and donned the blue glasses along with a fancy cravat, top hat, and walking stick.

  Marriage to Philomena would be an adventure.

  She marched into the Eagans’ shop, and thus Ramsdale had no choice but to march in right after her.

  One of the proprietors, a spare leprechaun of a fellow, totaled a ledger behind the shop counter, his fingers clicking away on his abacus. A book bound in red leather sat at his elbow, while his pencil trailed down a single page of foolscap. An older woman in a bonnet sporting four different stuffed birds inspected shelves of patent remedies, and a young lady all in pink—two pink birds amid her millinery—sniffed at the tisanes stored in large glass jars.

  Philomena went on an inspection tour, studying the shop shelf by shelf. She was very likely waiting until the other patrons left, and when they did, her gaze met Ramsdale’s.

  By God, she was good. Her perusal of him was exactly what a young gent would spare an older fellow of means. Brief and neither disrespectful nor envious.

  “May I help you gentlemen?” the proprietor asked. “Jack Eagan, at your service. I believe you were first, young sir.”

  “He was,” Ramsdale said.

  “These Tears of Aphrodite,” Philomena said, taking a blue bottle down from an arrangement on the shelves. “They’re quite expensive.” She uncorked the bottle and held it under her nose. “Rose water, cheap brandy, perhaps a dash of cloves. I hope you don’t expect the young ladies to drink this.”

  The shopkeeper took off his glasses, a man prepared to be patient with a difficult customer.

  “Have you any idea, sir, how unhappy the young ladies become when you gents fail to show them proper attention? When you dismiss all of their efforts to please you, put up with your conceits, flatter you, and endure your indifference? If I could sell my fair customers strong spirits in the name of medicine, I would, but that bottle you hold contains nothing less than a miracle of mythical proportions.”

  Ramsdale was uncomfortably reminded of Lady Maude—of all the Lady Maudes—and of Philomena’s question about respect.

  “I’m well aware of those tribulations,” Philomena replied. “Does your elixir claim to end the young ladies’ suffering?”

  The shopkeeper folded his page of foolscap. “It can, indeed. Sometimes, what we need to see us through a challenge is a drop of hope. That bottle can give a young lady hope. My sainted mother believed that half of an apothecary’s inventory was hope and the persistence it yields. How many problems can be solved by application of those two intangibles?”

  Philomena jammed the cork back in the bottle and brandished the label side at Eagan. “You imply the recipe for this potion was discovered by the daughter of Professor Phineas Peebles. How did she come by her discovery, and why would she share it with you?”

  Unease crept into Eagan’s eyes. “You know the good professor?”

  “And his daughter.” Philomena’s tone brought the temperature in the shop down considerably.

  Eagan grasped his lapels with both hands. “Then you know that she’s exactly the sort of young lady—a plain spinster, overlooked for years, no hope of marriage—who would have sympathy for others similarly situated, though I daresay her circumstances are none of your affair.”

  Ramsdale strode forward, shamelessly using his height to glower down at the shopkeeper.

  “Miss Peebles is neither plain nor overlooked. She is brilliant, tenacious, passionate about her scholarship, and honorable to her beautiful bones. You slander the next Countess of Ramsdale at your everlasting peril. My intended would live on crusts in the meanest garret before she’d take another’s coin under false pretenses. You either erase all evidence of your vicious scheme from this shop in the next hour, or expect a call from my man of business.”

  Eagan scuttled back behind his counter. “And you would be?”

  Ramsdale dropped his voice to the register that carried endlessly even when he whispered. “Your sainted mother’s worst nightmare.”

  Philomena came up on Ramsdale’s side. “You behold the Earl of Ramsdale in a mild temper, sir.”

  “Mild…” Eagan cleared his throat and slipped his sheet of foolscap into a slit in the ledger’s binding. “Mild temper. I see. Well. Then.”

  He kept two sets of books, and he swindled young women. Probably swindled old women too, and anybody desperate enough to rely on his pharmaceutical products. He did not sell hope and persistence.

  He sold lies.

  Except for Eagan and Philomena, the shop was empty. Would she truly mind if Ra
msdale indulged in a bit of pedagogic violence?

  She was staring at the ledger, at the barely discernible slit in the red leather binding into which Eagan’s foolscap had disappeared. Staring more fixedly than she stared out of windows, into fires, or at her tea.

  Not more fixedly than she’d regarded Ramsdale in the office, though.

  “What is it?” Ramsdale asked.

  “I know where the Duke is. Ramsdale—or at least where the Motibus Humanis is, I know.”

  “We’ve no need to involve a duke,” Eagan sputtered. “I’ll happily relabel—I mean, remove the offending bottles. Cupid’s Tears would sell quite well, or Cupid’s Revenge. I rather like—”

  Ramsdale grabbed Eagan by his neckcloth. “No tears, no revenge, no more profiting from the false hopes of the lovelorn with your greed and dishonesty.”

  He gave Eagan a slight shake—a minor, almost gentle shake, truly—but didn’t let him go until Philomena flicked Eagan’s cravat.

  “Every bottle,” she said. “Gone, before the next customer sets foot in this shop of horrors. I have it on good authority that the professor is about to unveil the contents of the real manuscript, and your paltry scheme will be similarly unmasked.”

  Eagan changed colors, from pale to choleric. “No more love potions. I understand. I do understand, my lord. Sir. I mean—I understand.”

  “Come,” Philomena said, taking Ramsdale by the arm. “We have a Duke to set free.”

  *

  Ramsdale hailed them a hackney. As a female in polite society, Philomena would have traveled with him in a closed conveyance at risk to her reputation. She had never occupied anything but the tolerated fringe of good society, and to all appearances, she was not a female.

  “I wanted to hit him, Ramsdale. I wanted to ball up my fist and plant him a facer. Draw his cork, put up my fives. He lied. His whole shop is a lie.”

  Ramsdale kissed her cheek. “The soaps and sachets seemed genuine enough. I wanted to do more than hit him.”

  How Philomena loved the menace in Ramsdale’s voice and the affection in his kiss. “The soaps and sachets are lures for the unwary, and when we’re upset, we’re all unwary.”