Her ladyship snorted. “A fine speech, very gentlemanly, and you even mean what you say, you daft boy. My Peter died when he wasn’t much older than you.”
“Peter” had to have been the late Marquess of Pembroke, the husband who had left her ladyship widowed decades ago.
“I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am.”
She finished her drink in one swallow. “You have no idea of my loss, no idea what it feels like to surrender your entire heart into the keeping of somebody who wants nothing more than to treasure you for the rest of his life. Then he’s taken from you, day by day, fading into a shadow of the handsome specimen you married. Your sorrow is vast, but most of it is for him, who must live knowing he’ll not see his daughters make their bows. Peter wasn’t in much physical pain, but he suffered greatly.”
As had her ladyship. “Did he die of a wasting disease, my lady?”
“A bad heart, or so the quacks claimed, but do you know, as handsome, charming, and utterly irresistible as he was when we became engaged, his illness showed me exactly what a fine choice of husband I’d made.”
Was this how Griffin felt when Julian got to prosing on about a point of protocol? For her ladyship had a point of some sort, and Julian was at a loss to fathom it.
“Your husband was heir to the Moreland dukedom, was he not?”
“He was, which mattered a very great deal to my parents. What mattered to me was that Peter could make me laugh. He made me feel special. When he proposed, he made me feel as if he was getting the better of the bargain, though I wasn’t the wife his parents had in mind for him. My papa was a mere ruralizing viscount, and not even wealthy.”
Did Elizabeth know this story? For all that Lady Pembroke was widowed, Julian suspected she would have chosen the same man and the same marriage, given the chance.
“Yours was a love match, then.”
She tipped up her empty glass, examining the dregs. “Pour me another tot. Ancient history leaves one with a thirst.”
Julian obliged.
“Peter told me after our younger daughter was born that before we married, he was already tiring more easily, and the social season had become drudgery. He attributed his symptoms to advancing age—he was in his twenties, for God’s sake—and then to his father’s growing insistence that the heir take over the business of the dukedom. Even as Peter married me, he was dying. We simply didn’t know it.”
“You are sharing this unhappy story for a reason.”
“This is not an unhappy story, you simpleton. Peter was the love of my life. I had more than fifteen years with him, and I treasure each and every memory of those years. He gave me two children, his family became my family, and he left me well provided for. By the time he was your age, he could no longer sit a horse for even an hour, and we’d danced our last waltz. You are wasting time, Haverford.”
Elizabeth would be this fierce on behalf of family, if she ever saw the need.
“Your husband left you well provided for, but I can’t promise my duchess the same security. What sort of titled husband expects his bride to take that risk?”
Her ladyship sat back, her drink in her hand. “Half of polite society is living in dun territory at any given time. Your situation is neither unusual nor hard to discern for anybody who looks closely.”
There was a cheering bit of news. “Not hard to discern, how?”
“Your castle needs repairs, your sister hasn’t been in London for a full season in years. I don’t know what you’ve done with your brother, but I doubt he’s eating off gold plates.”
Julian had been prepared to endure pointed questions from her ladyship—Elizabeth had warned him—but not a reckless invasion of his family’s privacy.
“What do you know of my brother?”
“Ah, now you take off the gloves. About time. Lord Griffin St. David appeared in Debrett’s for the first five years of his life. Your papa was enormously pleased to have a spare, but then he became enormously quiet about his second son. Most people concluded the boy had died—these things happen. I had a cousin who ran off to the Continent with another man. Grandpapa paid Debrett’s to misplace his entry too.”
“I have not misplaced my only brother. Griffin has his own household nearby and he’s in good health.”
Her ladyship refreshed Julian’s drink. “Is he the reason you’ve not found a duchess? I’ve heard he’s not right in the brainbox.”
Anger burned off the last of Julian’s tolerance for this inquisition. Had Sherbourne let that detail slip in her ladyship’s company?
“Where did you hear that?”
“In the ladies’ retiring room at some ball or other more than twenty years ago. The St. David spare was said to be daft. A rumor of bad blood or inherited weakness in a ducal family never dies. Peter knew that, and kept his situation quiet as long as he could.”
Lady Pembroke slid Julian’s drink closer to his side of the table, and he ignored it. “Who else have you told about my brother?”
“Nobody. Benedict Andover is well acquainted with your family history, but we’re not your enemies, Haverford. I bring up his lordship—Lord Griffin, that is—because I’ll not have Elizabeth making decisions without all the facts. Your brother attends services, I take it, so you haven’t made a secret of him.”
“You’ve made inquiries regarding my brother?”
“My niece’s happiness is at stake, Haverford. Her parents aren’t thinking clearly because two younger daughters have recently married, and Elizabeth is determined to be contrary. If Lord Anthony and his wife believe you’re interested in Elizabeth, and she in you, they’ll be eager to see a match made. Moreland will stick his oar in, his duchess will have to have her say…and priorities will be obscured.”
In other words, nobody would see Elizabeth. Nobody would focus on her well-being, her security.
Julian rose, though the sitting room was tiny, probably a dressing closet in an earlier century, and he had nowhere to pace.
“I informed Miss Windham on the day she arrived that I’m not interested in matrimony. She assured me she wasn’t looking for a husband.”
Her ladyship worked at the label on the bottle with one thumbnail. “Young people.”
“We were trying to be honest with each other, and our mutual lack of interest in matrimony formed the basis for an accord unique in my experience, and very likely in Miss Windham’s as well.”
Lady Pembroke gave him the same owlish look Elizabeth and Griffin did, as if his accent had become indecipherable, or nearly so.
“You fell arse over escutcheon in love,” her ladyship said. “With the Windhams, it can happen like that. Strutting about full of their own consequence one day, and down on bended knee the next. They fall hard and fast, and are sometimes the last to know it.”
Would Elizabeth know if she was in love with him?
“Be that as it may, your ladyship, my prospects are not sound, there is Griffin to consider, and in case it has escaped your notice, we’re in the middle of the longest blasted house party ever to blight the Welsh countryside.”
“Elizabeth’s uncle Percival is a yeller,” Lady Pembroke said, finishing her drink. “Her father, Lord Tony, is more the kind to quietly skewer those who transgress. I gather you’re somewhere in between. What have you done with your brother?”
Julian resumed his seat. “I’ve tried to make him happy. Griffin lives on a tidy holding not a mile distant, with staff. His home is commodious—eight bedrooms, six hundred acres—and I see him frequently.”
“He can’t be that simple if he’s on his own property.”
“He’s…for Griffin to inherit the title would be a hardship for him. He’s aware that compared to others, he has limitations, and try though he might, being the duke is beyond him. I haven’t had him declared incompetent because in many regards, he’s quite capable.”
To subject Griffin to an inquiry, strip him publicly of all authority over his own affairs, hold him up to ridicule and pity…P
apa had wanted to for the sake of the title, and Julian had fought his father to a stalemate for the sake of his brother.
Lady Pembroke patted Julian’s hand. “Many an idiot has sat in the Lords. Politics attracts the feebleminded, Peter used to say. Witness, dear Percival thrives on his legislative machinations.”
“You just insulted one of the most respected dukes in the realm.”
“His own children tire of his maunderings, and his daughters-in-law have written holiday poems mocking Moreland’s political rantings. The Countess of Hazelton has threatened to collect her sisters’ satires into a book and donate the proceeds to charity.”
She was telling him this for another one of her unfathomable reasons. “This does not sound like any titled family of my acquaintance.”
“And the lot of them are determined that Elizabeth should wed. Do you love her, Haverford?”
The window was open, and the only sound in the room was the Haverford pennant flapping in the wind atop the castle. The breeze was brisk today and scented with rain.
“I esteem Miss Windham very…”
Lady Pembroke folded her arms. She was an old woman who’d known much heartache and much love. She’d see through a lie, and through a man who told lies.
“I’ve fallen arse over escutcheon in love.”
“Have you told her about your brother?”
“They meet in the morning for a constitutional, and he plagues her with endless questions. She enjoys his company.” Julian took another sip of spirits, for those words had given his throat an ache.
“So Lord Griffin won’t be an issue. Now, what are we to do about your finances?”
The ache in Julian’s throat grew worse. “I am making progress, your ladyship, but my father inherited debts from my grandfather, and my commercial ventures are not the kind that yield a quick return.”
“So you’re truly rolled up?”
“I have a plan to bring the finances around, though progress is slow. By the standards of polite society, I am barely solvent.” For now, which was all the gossips cared about—thank you once again, dear Papa.
“That is a problem. Elizabeth can’t marry a pauper.”
“I’m not a pauper, and she can’t marry a man who only esteems her settlements or aristocratic connections. I won’t have it, but more to the point, neither will she.”
Her ladyship smiled, and Julian grasped why a ducal heir would toss aside all other possibilities and risk parental excoriation to marry a mere ruralizing viscount’s daughter.
“There’s reason to hope, then,” Lady Pembroke said. “Though I do despair of dear Charlotte. Don’t suppose you have any suggestions on that score?”
“Not a one, my lady.”
But there was reason to hope. Elizabeth’s dragon of an auntie had pronounced the situation salvageable, and that was the best news Julian had heard since…since forever. He had a plan, and he had hope, and soon, he might have a duchess too.
Chapter Fifteen
Sherbourne liked pretty women, and he liked intelligent women. The former were a delight to look at, the latter were enjoyable conversationalists. A pretty, intelligent woman—as Charlotte Windham was pretty and intelligent—made him uneasy.
“Miss Charlotte,” he said, bowing. “We never did schedule our archery exhibition.”
She occupied a bench in the castle’s inner courtyard, an odd place decorated with topiary beasts and the infernal red and white flowers favored by the St. Davids. The courtyard was sheltered from the wind, though the windows on all sides made it a public space.
“I challenged you to a contest, Mr. Sherbourne, not an exhibition.”
She had yet to invite him to sit, and because the castle was crawling with gentlemen, or perhaps because Miss Charlotte would skewer him for any presumption, Sherbourne stayed on his feet.
“Why insist on a winner and loser, when you know I’m likely to best you?”
“If you show yourself to be the better marksman, you’ll lose.”
Ducal families were prone to eccentricity, which was to be expected after so many generations of inbreeding.
“If I am the superior archer, I lose? Please do explain.”
“You might as well have a seat,” the lady said, moving aside a parasol, quiver, and arrows. “If you best me at archery before all the assembled guests, you reveal yourself to be lacking in gentlemanly refinement, for you have used your superior strength—an accident of biology—to cast a lady’s talents in the shade. Then I win, because I will have warned all the young women of your true nature.”
Win the battle, lose the war. An old concept, and Sherbourne should have seen the trap she’d set—the trap he’d set for himself, rather.
He took a seat nonetheless, because Charlotte Windham was an exponent of the social strata he expected to marry into. Ducal spinsters didn’t wander into the wilds of Wales all that often.
“How would I win the challenge?” he asked. “If I display my marksmanship honestly, I’m castigated for using the strength God gave me. If I cheat and pretend to lose, I’ll be castigated for humoring a woman who should have known better than to challenge me.”
“That tears it. Come along.” She snatched up her bow, shoved her parasol at him, and marched off.
Nobody told Lucas Sherbourne to come along, and yet he was on his feet, frilly parasol in hand, walking beside Miss Charlotte as she headed for the archway that led to the back terrace. She wore a russet walking dress, and such was the vigor of her stride that with every step, Sherbourne got a peek at cream-colored petticoats with bright red embroidery about the hems.
“Even I know that accompanying you somewhere private is not wise, Miss Charlotte.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. We’re in full view of the castle, where we shall remain while I disabuse you of your manly arrogance. I ought not, in part because it’s rag-mannered of me to correct a relative stranger, even if he is long overdue for a setdown. I also ought not because my aunt will lecture me for being a hoyden, and I do not relish her tirades. You’ll want to remove your jacket.”
“Women don’t usually instruct me to disrobe.” Said the man toting a lacy parasol.
“Which admission suggests you need to work on your flirtation as well as your manners, for you aren’t all that bad-looking, despite your size, and you’re known to be wealthy.”
She’d escorted him to the formal garden, where an archery butt sat a significant distance away. For a man who knew what he was about, on a still day, the target was manageable. A woman would need considerable strength to match his performance.
A bow leaned against a stone bench, and a quiver had been slung on the back of the bench.
“Were you expecting me?” Or better still, waiting on his chance passing because he wasn’t all that bad-looking?
“I prefer to entertain myself with a variety of equipment.”
Good God, had Miss Charlotte’s innuendo been sexual? Her expression said not, but like the bright artistry winking from beneath her skirts, her retort bore hidden meaning.
“Am I allowed a few practice shots?”
“As many as you need.”
The bow was a solid, elegant weapon. Centuries ago, the Welsh longbowmen had trained for ten years before taking a place on the battlefield, where their arrows could pierce armor and chain mail.
“My middle name is Herne,” Sherbourne said, unbuttoning his jacket. Bond Street tailors sewed a jacket to fit a man like a glove, and Miss Charlotte’s assistance was necessary to get Sherbourne out of his.
“So you were named for a predator,” she said, folding his jacket over the back of the bench.
“I was named for a Celtic god of hunting, also for a gouty great-uncle.” And damned if it didn’t feel good to get out of that jacket, the better to show off an equally exquisite waistcoat to the lady. Doubtless, he was breaking some rule by removing his jacket, but Miss Charlotte had given him an order.
Never argue with a lady.
S
herbourne tested the tension on the bow, found it adequate, and nocked an arrow. Miss Charlotte moved behind him as he took aim, and his first arrow sank into the target a few inches left of center.
“Not bad,” he murmured, nocking a second arrow. “I can do better.” This time, Shebourne concentrated, or tried to. Charlotte Windham’s skirts swishing distracted him. His arrow hit the target, several inches right of center.
“Third time’s the charm,” he said, taking up another arrow. He focused, ignoring the lady’s attempts to distract him. The Sherbournes prided themselves on setting goals and achieving those goals, and just as Sherbourne would right the injustices of his personal world by thoroughly ruining Haverford—a necessary antecedent to bringing modern industry to the valley—so too would he show Charlotte Windham—
He let the arrow fly, certain in his bones that it was headed for the dead center of the target.
Except the arrow never reached the butt. Something knocked it from its path, so it fell to the grass several yards short of the target.
Charlotte Windham was lowering her bow by the time Sherbourne realized what had happened.
“You can’t do that again,” he said. “That was a lucky shot. Nobody can deflect one arrow with another twice in succession.”
“Surely, the gentleman always knows best. Nock your arrow, Mr. Sherbourne.”
She did it again.
“You are a prodigy,” he said, as impressed as he was intrigued. What drove a woman to perfect a huntsman’s skills?
“I am merely a lady about one of my pastimes.”
“Is Haldale one of your pastimes?” The question was ungentlemanly in the extreme, and Sherbourne didn’t care.
“If I distract Haldale from sniffing about my sister’s skirts, and amuse myself at the same time, who are you to say anything to it, besides an indifferent marksman who invites himself to parties on the strength of his riches?”
Her assessment was uncomfortably accurate. “I’m the man who’ll warn you that Haldale has two children, each by a different woman, and like many of his ilk, he’s a very indifferent father.”
No Other Duke Will Do (Windham Brides) Page 19