Samuel nodded.
“I’m surprised you don’t think I deserve worse,” he admitted, with a wry laugh.
“I shan’t challenge you to a duel if that’s what you expect,” Devereaux remarked, leaning back in the chair and crossing his long legs at the ankle. His gaze darkened. “Although I won’t say the thought didn’t cross my mind when I first heard of what had been going on. If it wasn’t for my wife -” His expression softened at the fleeting mention of his new bride. “And for your own letter explaining everything I dare say my reactions may have been a little less tempered. As it is, you’re not the first man to make the mistake of trusting the wrong friends, nor do I doubt for a moment that you’ll be the last.” His voice dropped to a low growl. “As for Nicholls...what became of him, do you know?”
Samuel shook his head and relayed the night-time flight, omitting his friend’s cursory theft.
“Aye, well. He’d be a fool to show his face here any time soon. Or London, either. I warned my sister to be wary of associating with him, knowing him to be thick as thieves with my old friend Lenox.” His lips curled up into a smirk. “There’s an apt expression for the pair of them if ever there was. Now, about my sister...”
Samuel swallowed, not daring to look at Devereaux at that moment. He felt quite certain that if he had managed to obscure the truth of his feelings for Joanna Devereaux from the letter he sent her brother, he certainly could not withstand that very man’s scrutiny, now that he was here before him. Still, he ought to try.
Devereaux snorted as if something in Samuel’s avoidance was the very thing that betrayed him.
“She isn’t pining after him if that’s your concern.”
This was enough to make Samuel lift his chin and glance, confused, at his guest.
“Nicholls might have tried to win her hand disguised as you, but he was not successful. Her heart, such as I can tell, is still just about intact, save for...”
“Save for?”
“Never mind.” Devereaux waved his hand as if clearing smoke. “I have my spies in place. Or, spy, at least.” He waggled his dark eyebrows at Samuel. “Amazingly useful things, wives. You ought to see about acquiring yourself one.”
Samuel chuckled in spite of himself. His heart ached, still, in spite of everything, but that was nothing to do with his physical injuries, and everything to do with Joanna Devereaux, who had stalked away from him at the last assembly he had had the courage to attend, and who he had not dared to try to speak to a second time.
“The right one is worth her weight in gold,” Devereaux continued.
“You are preaching to the choir, Devereaux, so do not act as if you have learned a secret heretofore hidden from all men.” Samuel reached a hand up to smooth his hair and glanced towards the window. “’Tis in part the reason I agreed to the scheme in the first place, to afford myself the opportunity of meeting a young lady who might, perhaps, see past the title of duke and care to wed me for myself and not my reputation.”
As if he had uttered some kind of magic word, Devereaux straightened, fixing a steely gaze on his friend.
“I can understand that desire all too well,” he muttered, his voice gruff. “Although I maintain this was a particularly foolhardy way to go about it. And you are now the talk of the town, should you care to know it. London finds the story especially entertaining and you have an army of sympathetic friends eager to welcome you back to where you belong.”
“Oh, joy,” Samuel muttered. He had entertained the thought of returning to London but fleetingly since everything had blown up in Bath and was, for now, delaying the dread day when that must be his next course of action.
“I do not suppose you need me to tell you that returning to London would not be half so trying nor so tedious if you were not forced to do it alone.” Devereaux shrugged his broad shoulders. “A mere suggestion. Now, Edgmont, I have been in Bath but a few hours and not yet seen more than a glimpse of it, forever shifting between parlours. Let’s take a walk, shall we? I am eager to work out the aches and pains of travel and I dare say your joints could do with a little exercise. Let us take a turn of the Crescent, for I am eager to see the place of your misfortune for myself.” He made a fist, holding it up in a pantomime of a fighter. “Fear not, should any blackguard come out of the shadows, I am prepared. Between the two of us, we might fend him off without too great a catastrophe.”
He winked and Samuel laughed, in spite of himself. He liked Devereaux, more now than he had in London, and all the better for everything he had said and not said in the last hour. He stood, and the two men readied themselves to leave.
“Oh, before we do, perhaps we might stop in at the pump rooms. I have yet to meet Mrs Barnes and thank her personally for taking such good care of my sister, and I have it on good authority that that is where she is most likely to be found at this hour. You do not mind the detour?”
Samuel shook his head, feeling that whilst the pump rooms had not been high on his list of preferred destinations, he would weather the stares of a curious public all the better with the confident, self-possessed Sir Benjamin beside him.
Chapter Fourteen
Joanna’s heart had started beating faster before she and Amelia had even reached the door to the pump rooms, but, now that they were inside she was surprised and even a little disappointed to note that there was nothing so very terrifying after all.
She could convince herself that the eyes that fixed on her and her friend, the whispers that followed as they walked, were directed more at Amelia than her. There was a certain curiosity over who the new arrivals to Bath were, speculation over whether this was, indeed, the new Lady Devereaux who walked alongside her friend and sister-in-law, talking so contentedly.
“Joanna!” Edith broke away from Kitty Radcliff, pointedly turning her back on one small circle of young ladies before forsaking them entirely for her friend. “And Amelia! When did you arrive?”
“Just a few hours ago!” Amelia confessed, with a laugh. “I wished to see the pump rooms and Joanna was kind enough to accompany me. Now, where do you suppose my husband has got to? He disappeared over an hour ago, did not he, Joanna? And he made no mention of where he was going beyond the mysterious “errands” that gentlemen seem forever to have and which I am sure is merely an excuse for whenever they wish to be left alone.”
This was uttered in her usual light-hearted Amelia-esque way, but Joanna still could not quite get used to the notion of her friend referring to anybody as “my husband”, let alone the fact that the man she referred to was Joanna’s own brother.
“Oh, then you have not seen -”
“Ladies!”
Ben’s voice rang out before Edith could utter a single word of warning and Joanna looked up to greet her brother with a smile, noticing, too late, that he was not alone.
“I have just been getting better acquainted with a friend of yours, Joanna. Your grace, I believe you already know my sister and her friend, Miss Barnes. Allow me to introduce another friend of hers, my wife, Lady Amelia Devereaux.”
The duke bowed, politely greeting each lady in turn, but it was to Joanna that his eyes returned, resting longest.
“How do you enjoy Bath, your grace?” Amelia began, before Benjamin took her by the arm and steered her away, reserving his second arm for Edith and announcing, in a tone of voice that fooled no-one,
“How providential to see you here as well, Miss Barnes. Come, do introduce me to your Mama. I really must pay my respects and thank her for the excellent care she has taken of my dear sister these past weeks...”
Joanna glanced around, watching as her last friend disappeared, leaving her alone with the one man she both most longed and loathed to speak to. Alone might have been an exaggeration, for the pump rooms still buzzed with the hum of footsteps and conversation, although Joanna could not be certain that it did not dip in volume as people passed her and paused to examine the pair, remarking in whispers that this must be the couple at the centre of the m
ost recent gossip to spread through Bath like wildfire.
“Miss Devereaux,” the duke began, dipping his head once more in a motion that might have been a bow. “I’m sure you are very happy to have your brother with you, and his new wife is, I believe, a long-standing friend of yours...”
“Excuse me, your grace,” Joanna broke in, praying he did not hear the wobble in her voice as clearly as she did.
“Wait, Miss Devereaux-” With quicker reflexes than she had credited him with, the duke reached out a hand to prevent her from turning and walking away. He dropped it just as quickly so that his hand had barely disturbed the air closest to her elbow, but the action was enough to keep her rooted to the spot which had been his desire. “I tried to explain myself to you once before and you walked away. Please do not walk away from our conversation a second time.”
“I -” Joanna swallowed, lifting her chin in a mode of defiance she had not yet deployed against this particular gentleman and which she hoped would be successful. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“Then say nothing at all, but merely listen to what I wish to say,” the duke replied, meeting her eyes with an imploring gaze. “I will be brief.” He nodded towards the windows. “It is not as if you can flee the pump rooms at present, in any case.”
Joanna turned, letting out a bitter sigh when she noticed the windows were streaked with heavy raindrops. He was right: there would be no leaving the pump rooms until the shower cleared, even if she was determined to do it.
“Very well,” she conceded. “But I do not see why we must stand still and draw an audience around us.” She began to walk and, gratified more than she had a right to be, was pleased to hear his footsteps hurry to join her.
“I am sorry for the deception,” he began, taking a hurried breath.
“You have said as much before,” Joanna replied, biting down hard on her lower lip when she remembered she had been determined not to speak and here she was doing that very thing.
“True, I did, but that does not mean it does not warrant saying again. I am sorry for the deception, for the scheme my friend and I mounted to pretend to be one another. I am sorry that I did not introduce myself to you as I ought, that I let you believe I was....Mr Edward Nicholls, and not Samuel Rowe, the Duke of Edgmont. I am sorrier still that my friend made some bald claim on your heart, using my name to do it.” His words came out in a tangle, a rush of emotion that made Joanna slow her pace and eventually stop, turning to regard him curiously. His eyes flashed with hurt and emotion and she realised that these were not mere words to him He truly did regret that his friend had flirted with her and made every appearance of planning to propose before too long.
“I am sorry that your heart was broken by my friend’s cruel, callous ways. I am sorry because I ought to be sorry, because any young lady treated so ought to have some degree of recourse, but I am more sorry because it was you who has been hurt.” He drew a breath, and Joanna held hers, certain that if she moved a single muscle he would not say the words she now longed to hear more than any others.
“I am sorry, Miss Devereaux, because I wanted to be the one to tell you I cared for you then, as I care for you now. I am sorry that you have been hurt by this scheme, by me, because - I love you.”
I LOVE YOU.
There, he had done it, uttered the words he had once thought he never would. He had once thought love a fairy-tale, something carefully constructed to entice and entrap the hearts of women. Later, he came to think that love was only a thing available to those who had not the concerns of fortune or position. What people in his circle, or in his parents’ had ever had the luxury of marrying for love? No, the best he could hope for was a sensible marriage, a wife of equal standing about whom he could be assured possessing character and intelligence. To hope for more was foolish, as this scheme had been foolish. And now, having found the very young lady he once could not imagine ever coming to know, he had thrown away their chance at happiness together before it had ever really been a chance. She would not love him now. She could not forgive him.
“You love me?” Miss Devereaux uttered the words in such broken, surprised shock that it stunned Samuel to hear them repeated back to him almost as much as it had done to say them in the first place. Gaining courage, he nodded.
“I do, Miss Devereaux and I suppose it might be my penance. I never dreamed of meeting someone like you, despite what I might have hoped for. And now I realise that if I had met you as myself and not masquerading as some anonymous other, we might have been happy. Instead, I have ruined things before they even began.”
The ghost of a smile played about Miss Devereaux’s face as her eyes searched his, seeking to look past his clumsy torrent of words to the truth.
“Why did you never say so before now?”
Samuel was so stunned that her response was not a rejection that it took him a moment to piece together a reply.
“Well, you cared for the duke, for Edward I mean. You would not have noticed me compared to him.”
“You do me a disservice if you think so,” she said, with a haughty sniff. “And you never gave me the opportunity. How could I dare to think you might care for me when at every opportunity it was your friend, and not you, who sought to dominate my attention?”
“Then - you would have cared even if I was not the Duke of Edgmont?”
It was too much to hope for, but as he said the words aloud he realised their truth. Yes, there was the same smile she had given him upon the very first afternoon that they had met. She had liked him then, even before she knew his name - either name he had claimed for his own.
“What a fool I have been. I ought to have known that any young lady worth loving would see past my title and estate to who I truly was. I was so tired of London, of being the target of eager Mamas seeking to match their daughters well that I did not think it possible I could ever meet a young lady who did not see me as a prize to be won.”
Miss Devereaux’s eyes lifted at this, and he saw a gently mocking light in her eyes.
“Not that I think of myself so very highly,” he put in. At last, he abandoned his attempt to speak at all, shaking his head in frustration. “I do not do things as I should. This is not how I had hoped or planned for this to happen, but Miss Devereaux - my dear Miss Devereaux -”
“Your grace!” Joanna interrupted, pointing towards a window. “Look outside. The rain has stopped!”
“So it has,” he grumbled, seeking to shuffle his thoughts and his words into place once more, to cobble together something he might salvage from this confused attempt at a confession of love.
“Why don’t we take a walk out of doors together and enjoy the fresh air, now that we are permitted the chance?”
“Together?” Samuel asked, silently praying she was not seeking to disappear on him once more.
“If you wish.” She uttered the words with an imperious toss of the head but he was looking at her so closely he could not miss the anxious shadow in her eyes.
“I wish,” he said, offering her his arm and feeling a great exhale in his soul as she slipped her hand through it. “I wish very much, Miss Devereaux.”
Epilogue
The wedding between Miss Joanna Devereaux and the Duke of Edgmont was the very thing London society needed to reinvigorate itself after a particularly long and dreary season. Rumours swirled as the new couple arrived over quite what had happened in Bath to bring them together, but the bride’s brother, Sir Benjamin Devreaux, was seen smiling and laughing with both bride and groom so it was supposed that nothing so very dreadful could have taken place and the most outlandish of rumours was put to bed. That the bride and groom brought with them their own minister was a trifle unusual, but nobody had ever heard of the country clergyman or his wife before, and supposed they must be friends of the family and wasn’t it well within the duke’s prerogative to act with a little eccentricity from time to time?
“Joanna, you look lovely!” Amelia cried, taking one last look
at her friend as they made their way into the church.
“The church looks lovely!” Joanna replied, diverting attention away to the elegant building she was about to get married in. “I am so happy to finally have come to London. It was my dearest wish for so long and to be getting married here is like a dream come true!”
Amelia reached a hand to her eyes, dabbing away at a dust mote, and said nothing for a moment. Joanna felt a little tearful herself and drew in a long, fortifying breath as they crossed the threshold. Benjamin was standing guard at the door like a tiger, although he relented his usual scowl into a grin as he saw his two favourite young ladies approaching. The smile faded a little as he leaned in to embrace his sister.
“I thought it best to warn you that your Mama has come.” Ben still refused to acknowledge any connection with the former Lady Devereaux.
Joanna’s heart fluttered.
“Mama?”
Joanna had written to tell her that she would be marrying the duke, but she had heard nothing in return, and Lady Devereaux had so far avoided all attempts Joanna had made to reunite with her. She ought not to be surprised that for the wedding she could put by whatever strange reticence she had and attend, for it was a significant social event and the rumours that swirled concerning it would be nothing compared to those that would swirl around her if she did not attend her only daughter’s wedding to the Duke of Edgmont.
“Don’t worry about her,” Amelia said, squeezing her arm encouragingly. “It is understandable she should wish to see you get married, but the day is yours to enjoy, and all of ours to enjoy with you. Look!” She pointed through the doorway into the church. “You do not want to keep Samuel waiting, do you?”
Samuel was what the duke had become to Joanna and she preferred his Christian name greatly. It stripped away the formality of “the duke” and made him seem more like the jolly, amusing gentleman she had first met and fallen in love with when she thought his name was something else entirely. They were still cleaning the up the mess that Edward Nicholls had caused during his short stint as the duke, and she knew it had given her husband-to-be more than a few late nights to resolve, but they did not speak of it any more. He had dismissed the prank as childish folly and she had acknowledged that she, too, had once longed to escape her name, back when she thought that her brother’s misdeeds were what kept her in exile in Westham. If anything, their shared experience had brought them closer together.
A Duke in Disguise (Westham Chronicles Book 3) Page 11