The Wicked Ways of a Duke

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  The newspaper also waxed volubly on the happy days she had spent in Sussex with her aunt and uncle after her mother’s death. Her mother’s family, the paper said, had cared for her with overwhelming kindness and generosity, and that statement gave Rhys all the more reason to view this account of her life with a jaundiced eye. He remembered her words from the night before about reconciling with her mother’s family, and if her life with the Feathergills had been so blissful, there would have been no reconciliations necessary. Besides, he’d met the aunt. Kindness and generosity were not what came to mind.

  Not all the morning papers displayed the sort of treacly sentiments about Miss Abernathy and her family expressed by Talk of the Town, but he knew reading about her wasn’t going to help his cause, and when his valet entered the breakfast room a few minutes later, Rhys was happy to set aside the morning papers in the hope of more useful information. “Well, Fane, have you determined Miss Abernathy’s plans for today?”

  The valet paused beside his master’s chair. “She intends to visit the National Gallery this afternoon. There is an exhibit of French painters on at present, and Miss Abernathy, I’m told, is fond of art.”

  “The National Gallery?” He stared at Fane, a bit doubtful that a former seamstress would choose to spend her time looking at paintings. “Are you certain?”

  Fane looked affronted by the question. “Sir,” he said with feeling.

  “Forgive me,” Rhys apologized at once. “But it never ceases to amaze me how you find out these things.”

  His valet gave a discreet cough. “I happened to encounter Miss Abernathy’s new maid—Miss Nancy Woddell, her name is—in one of the laundry rooms of the Savoy. She and I are of the same mind, sir, that the laundering of our employers’ clothing requires our personal attention.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it, though it would be a happy day indeed if I could actually afford to stay at the Savoy. But do go on.”

  “Upon finishing our tasks, Miss Woddell and I were able to take the service lift together. We discovered, to our mutual surprise and delight, that our separate destinations were on the very same floor.”

  “A most amazing coincidence,” Rhys commented, vastly entertained.

  “Yes, sir. Miss Woddell and I conversed in the corridor outside Miss Abernathy’s suite for quite some time.”

  “You devil.” He began to laugh. “Fane, I had no idea you were such an accomplished ladies’ man.”

  “Five years in your service has been very useful to my education, sir, in many respects. Miss Woddell, by the way, was quite impressed by my position as valet to Comte Roselli. He married that Austrian princess, sir, if you recall. Ladies’ maids always enjoy hearing about princesses.”

  “I shall take your word for it, and I applaud your ability to charm members of the fair sex in the laundry rooms and corridors of hotels, although I feel compelled to point out you are no longer valet to Roselli, but to me.”

  “Yes, sir. But I thought it best not to volunteer that information. Maids often tell things to their ladies, and Miss Abernathy might receive the impression you sent your valet to spy upon her. We don’t want the young lady believing you would do something so desperate as that.”

  “We? Awfully presumptuous of you, Fane, to take such a personal interest in my pursuit of Miss Abernathy.”

  Fane’s reply was succinct and to the point. “If you marry Miss Abernathy, sir, I get paid.”

  Rhys couldn’t argue with logic like that.

  He arrived at the National Gallery well ahead of Miss Abernathy, Fane in tow to perform the necessary reconnaissance. His valet’s forewarning of her approach was perfectly timed, and at the moment she entered the gallery where the works of some contemporary artists were on view, Fane had vanished altogether and Rhys was demonstrating vast interest in a Renoir.

  “Your Grace?”

  He turned, looking—he hoped—surprised to see her. To his relief, she also seemed surprised to see him. She came toward him, the silk of her pale blue walking suit rustling with each step. Perched on her dark hair was one of those enormous hats shaped like an oversized dinner plate and piled high with a froth of dark blue ribbons and cream-colored ostrich plumes.

  “We meet again, Miss Bosworth,” he said, and doffed his own hat with a bow.

  When Rhys straightened, he found that she was smiling, her upturned face alight with such genuine pleasure at the sight of him that he was caught off guard. Silly of her, he thought, and painfully naive as well, to display her inner feelings so openly. Hadn’t anyone ever taught her to play the game?

  Even as those thoughts went through his mind, something else stirred within him at the shining pleasure in her face, something he couldn’t quite define, something a bit like the feeling one got when an unexpected shaft of sunlight peeked out from between dark clouds on a gloomy day.

  Irritated with himself for such fanciful rubbish, he tore his gaze from hers and gestured to the canvases around them. “Are you fond of art?”

  “Yes. I used to draw and paint when I was a girl, and I love looking at paintings, though I don’t often have the opportunity.” She glanced past him. “That’s a Renoir, isn’t it?”

  When he nodded, she moved to stand beside him. “Dance in the Country,” she read from the printed sign beside the painting.

  He studied her as she studied the Renoir, and he wondered if a direct approach might be best. He could just put it to her in a simple, straightforward fashion: he liked her, she liked him, he needed money and a wife, she had money and needed a husband; it was a match made in heaven, so what about just getting on with it?

  “I like this painting,” she said, bringing him out of his strategic speculations. “What a vivid expression the artist gives her face. It’s clear she’s in love.”

  “Not with the man she’s dancing with, poor chap.” Rhys gestured to the woman in the painting with his hat. “Her name is Aline. She was Renoir’s mistress when he painted this.”

  “His mistress? Oh, please tell me he wasn’t married to someone else at the time! I should hate that. Mistresses are such a detriment to a couple’s happiness. And what if there are children?”

  Rhys became uneasy. Most women of his own circle would have accepted the inevitability of their husband keeping a mistress without any fuss. Miss Abernathy, he feared, would not be so sanguine. “He wasn’t married to someone else. In fact, he married Aline in the end.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad! I adore stories with happy endings.”

  He began to fear the worst. “So you are a romantic. I suppose…” He paused, striving to put just the right offhand note in his voice. “I suppose you believe in our modern ideal of marrying for love?”

  She seemed surprised. “Of course. Don’t you?”

  He froze. There was nothing for it. He’d been fool enough to ask the question. Forcing a smile to his lips, he lied. “Of course.”

  To him, it sounded terribly unconvincing, but she seemed satisfied by his answer and turned her attention to another painting.

  Damn. He realized he should have known it all along. A woman who’d had a respectable, middle-class upbringing was bound to possess all the staunch moral convictions that came with it. Her sort would never find a marriage of purely material considerations acceptable. She didn’t approve of a married man keeping a mistress, so she probably abhorred other sensible, time-honored customs, too, like marriage partners sleeping in separate beds and gentlemen spending their evenings at the club. Hell, she probably collected those commemorative plates of Victoria and Albert in scenes of domestic bliss. It was clear a direct, expeditious approach was out of the question. Rhys resigned himself to courtship.

  “This is a beautiful landscape,” she commented, causing him to glance at the painting she was studying. The moment he realized what it was, he couldn’t help a surprised chuckle.

  “By Jove, that’s Rosalind’s Pond.”

  “You know this place?”

  “I do. I know the artist
as well.” He gestured to the signature in the bottom right corner with his hat. “This was painted by Earl Camden, an old school friend of mine. Whole family’s mad about art, and Cam was always mucking about with paints.”

  “He’s very good.”

  “Yes, he is. He visited me in Florence one year. Came to study the masters, paint the Arno, that sort of thing.”

  “Is this pond in Italy?” she asked in some surprise. “It seems a very English setting to me.”

  “It is English. Rosalind’s Pond is on the grounds at Greenbriar, a villa owned by his family. It’s quite near here, actually, just past Richmond, no more than an hour by train. I stayed there the summer I was seventeen. Cam and I always liked Rosalind’s Pond. Good fishing.”

  She laughed. “And here I was thinking it a perfect spot for picnics.”

  “Do you like picnicking, Miss Bosworth?”

  “I do, though since coming to London, I’ve not had much opportunity for it. Having grown up in the country, I miss picnicking and blackberrying.”

  “Ah, a country girl. Yorkshire, I’d guess, from your accent?”

  “North Yorkshire, yes.”

  “Pretty country up there. No wonder you miss it. Still, picnics and picking blackberries are all very well, but it’s the fishing that matters, Miss Bosworth. Excellent trout fishing in that part of the world.”

  She bit her lip in apology. “I don’t know how to fish, I’m afraid.”

  A cough interrupted them, and they turned to find they were blocking the view of the painting by a group of schoolboys and their tutor. They moved on to the next canvas, a rendering of the Moulin Rouge in which a woman with green skin and orange hair played a prominent role. Miss Abernathy lingered a long time over it, tilting her head this way and that, a puzzled frown on her face.

  “You seem quite fascinated by this one,” he commented at last.

  “I’m just wondering why her face is green.”

  He didn’t tell her it was the artist’s oblique reference to absinthe. “Indigestion?” he said instead, making her laugh.

  “That doesn’t seem very artistic, does it?” She shook her head. “No, Your Grace, I think it must be face paint.”

  “Couldn’t be. This is a depiction of the Moulin Rouge, and none of Zidler’s girls paint their faces green. At least not that I ever saw.”

  “You’ve been to the Moulin Rouge?”

  Rhys turned his head at the surprise in her voice and found that she was staring at him. Her eyes were round as saucers, and he wondered if he’d made a blunder in mentioning he’d seen the Moulin Rouge’s infamous cancan dancers. Most women had a weakness for rakes—a fact for which he daily thanked heaven—but perhaps Miss Abernathy was different. Perhaps she preferred an upright, moral sort of fellow. After all, she had displayed the absurd tendency to regard him as if he were some sort of white knight ever since their first meeting.

  He briefly toyed with the idea of playing up to that ideal, of prolonging her image of him as a heroic, noble figure long enough to get her to the altar, but he abandoned that notion almost at once. The newspapers brought up his notorious past with such tiresome regularity he couldn’t hope to keep it a secret. Besides, acting a role so contrary to his true nature would be deuced hard work, and he was a lazy fellow.

  “I have been to the Moulin Rouge, I confess it,” he answered her. “I lived in Paris for several years before I went to Italy, and my quarters were quite near Montmartre.” His reasons for living a block from the most notorious bohemian district in Paris were quite ignoble, but he spared her the details.

  “What is it like?” she asked. “Is there really an opium den there?”

  “Several, I’m told, although I’ve never been in that part of the club. I’m not an opium-eater myself.” Absinthe was another matter; he’d been quite fond of the stuff back in his Paris days, but he didn’t tell her about that either. An appearance of frankness was one thing, unnecessary honesty was something else.

  “Of course you’re not an opium-eater!” She shook her head and touched a hand to her temple. “Heavens, what was I thinking to ask such a question? Forgive me. I never meant to imply you had personal experience with opium dens. You’re much too good and principled a gentleman for that sort of behavior.”

  She was gazing at him with such obvious admiration, he couldn’t stand it any longer. “I fear you have a mistaken impression of me, Miss Bosworth,” he said, letting the chips fall where they may. “I am not good at all. The reason I never entered the opium dens was that my fascination lay with the cancan dancers.”

  “Oh.” She looked away and considered this information, and she was silent for so long that by the time she spoke again, Rhys was sure he’d ruined his chances for good and all. “Do the…” She paused and cast a quick glance around. “Do the girls really have little red hearts tattooed on their derrieres?” she asked in a whisper.

  He burst out laughing at the unexpected question, earning himself several disapproving stares from the other people in the gallery. They left the room in a huff, but despite their departure, Rhys leaned down toward Miss Abernathy in a confidential manner to offer his reply, ducking his head beneath the wide brim of her hat. “The hearts are embroidered on the backsides of their drawers,” he murmured close to her ear. “Rather a treat for us chaps, especially me, since red’s my favorite color. As to the rest, they might have tattoos. I couldn’t say. We aren’t given a view of their bare behinds, more’s the pity.”

  From his view, her face was in profile, but as he watched a wash of rosy color spread over the side of her face and neck, he appreciated again what an innocent she was. The skin of her earlobe, he noticed, looked velvety soft. He was almost close enough to kiss her there, and he wondered if she would like that. He inhaled the lovely lavender scent of her, and as he exhaled, he blew warm breath against her ear with deliberate intent. She moved in response, a slight shift and shiver that gave him his answer.

  Footsteps tapped on the marble floor, interrupting this delicious experiment, and he straightened away from her, stepping back as she turned her head toward the door. When a pair of elderly ladies entered the gallery, she returned her attention to him with evident relief. “Thank goodness.”

  He gave her an inquiring look.

  “I’m hiding,” she confessed. “My aunt insists upon accompanying me everywhere, and when she cannot, she sends Robert in her stead.”

  “And which of them are you hiding from at present?”

  “Robert. He’s somewhere about, and sure to find me any moment now.” She sighed, looking quite unhappy at the prospect.

  “Your reconciliation with your family is going quite well, I see.”

  “Do not tease me about this, Your Grace, I beg you. I never have a moment to myself.”

  “And you don’t like that?”

  “I’m not used to it. I have lived out since I moved to London when I was seventeen. Being chaperoned everywhere makes me feel quite smothered.”

  Far be it from him to pass up a golden opportunity. Putting his hand on her elbow, he led her toward one of the doors leading out of the gallery. “Come with me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “If you wish to hide from someone,” he said, pausing to glance left and right before propelling her through the doorway, “you’d best do it properly.”

  They crossed into another gallery, then another, as Rhys searched for a place that would give him a few minutes to be alone with her. They had almost reached the end of the building before he spied what might serve the purpose—a long, dim corridor, its entrance blocked by a velvet rope hung between two short metal poles. “Now this looks like the perfect hiding place.”

  “But can we go back there?” She pointed to a sign on a stand beside the entrance. “This wing is closed in preparation for an exhibit from Rome. It is inaccessible to the public.”

  He reached for the hook that held the rope across the opening and unfastened it. “Nothing is ever inacc
essible to a duke,” he said, and ushered her into the corridor. “Besides, your cousin will never think to look for you back here.”

  “That’s true,” she said as he refastened the rope. “Robert never does anything against the rules.”

  “Poor fellow. No wonder he’s so deadly dull.”

  “Your Grace!” she remonstrated him, but was laughing as they walked side by side down the length of the empty corridor. At the end, it opened into an enormous room filled with Italian statues, reliefs, and glass display cases containing smaller sculptures. A massive statue of Neptune and his Tritons, half assembled, stood in the center of the room, ringed by metal scaffolding.

  He made a show of looking around. “There, you see? Not a chaperone in sight.”

  “Thank you,” she said, looking at him with gratitude and relief, two emotions he knew she would never have felt were she to know his true motives. If he still had a conscience, that might have bothered him. But his conscience, like his innocence, had disappeared long ago.

  “It looks a bit eerie in here, doesn’t it, with all these white marble statues?” she commented, glancing about the room, bringing Rhys out of his speculations. “An exhibit from Florence, the sign said.” She returned her gaze to him. “You lived in Florence, you said?”

  “I did, but I hope you’re not expecting a lecture tour about Italian statues.”

  “If I’d wanted a lecture tour, I’d have stayed with Robert. He loves to show off his Oxford education.” She gestured to the massive statue before them. “No doubt I’d have received at least an hour-long dissertation on this piece.”

  “Your cousin spent his days at university far more productively than I. But I can tell you this much: this is a statue of Neptune and his Tritons. Now, before you begin to be impressed with my Oxford education, I must confess I only know it’s Neptune because this is a replica of the Trevi Fountain in Rome.”

  She turned toward him, her face alight with curiosity. “Did you really swim naked in a fountain?”

  Rhys groaned. “Lord, is that old story still being circulated?”