No Dukes Allowed

by Grace Burrowes

  “You do know what the vase is worth?” When the Chinese had closed their porcelain export business in the early seventeenth century, the Dutch potters had created designs to compensate for the lack of imports. The work was exquisite, but when the Chinese resumed trading their wares, the Dutch had moved on to other inspirations. The container holding the mundane bouquet was a rare and beautiful antique.

  “The vase is pretty enough to merit a spot in the window,” she said, “so passersby can enjoy the lovely flowers too.”

  She was like no kind of duchess Adam had imagined, and as she’d led him all throughout this jewel of a house—the pantries were ingenious, the parlors exquisite, the bedrooms delightful—he’d admired everything, from the appointments, to the architecture, to the craftsmanship.

  He’d admired her architecture, too, from trim ankles, to rounded hips, to hands that were both graceful and competent. She was not overly endowed in the bosom, but Adam had always preferred modest perfection to ample mediocrity.

  He mentally dropped a hammer on his foot at that ungentlemanly thought.

  “Would you like to sketch that scrollery?” she asked, crossing to the desk. “You’ve been staring a hole in it.”

  “Sketch it?” He would dearly, dearly love to make a drawing of the woodwork and to make enough notes to recall the layout of the whole dwelling. “If that wouldn’t be too great an imposition.”

  She set paper, pencils, a penknife, and standish on the blotter. “I’ll leave you to it. The bell-pull will summon the housekeeper, and I’ll have the kitchen send you up a proper tray. Tea cakes and gunpowder will hardly be adequate for a man of your robust proportions.”

  Her gaze was frankly appraising. Not flirtatious, simply a hostess taking the measure of a guest and pronouncing him hungry.

  Which Adam was—for food, but also to capture this house on paper. “Your hospitality is much appreciated.”

  “We’re to be neighbors,” she said, beaming at him as if being neighbors was the most enjoyable mischief known to humankind. “Make yourself at home, and I’ll look in on you later.”

  She left the room after one more quick perusal of the accoutrements on the blotter, and Adam took a seat at the desk. The pencils were sharp, so he could set immediately memorializing what he’d seen. The carvings, the floor plans, the window latches, the ingenious vent that let heat from the kitchen rise to the family parlor.

  The image that took shape on the page was a homage to lovely architecture: gracious, pleasing, and—where was the harm in a quick portrait?—sporting freckles across her cheeks.

  Chapter Three

  * * *

  Genie sat in the family parlor and tried to ignore the fact that a man occupied the library only a few yards away. An attractive, intelligent man.

  Mr. Morecambe had accepted the tray from the kitchen more than an hour ago, and Genie had spent the intervening time staring at the pages of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe. The story was too much about brave knights hiding who they really were, getting wounded and killed, and acting like complete gudgeons. The ladies merely looked pretty and endured propositions, except for Rebecca the healer.

  She possessed courage and lifesaving skills and doubtless had had wonderful adventures in far-off Granada.

  “I am no Rebecca,” Genie informed the marmalade cat. “I am merely a dowager duchess without offspring.” The most pathetic creature in all of Debrett’s.

  One of few appointments in Godmama’s house that Genie disliked was a stuffed nightingale arranged in a gilded cage amid silk roses. The little bird stared at her out of glass eyes, until Genie wanted to fling Ivanhoe at the wall.

  Mr. Morecambe’s interest in the house had been passionate. He’d traced the woodwork with his bare fingers, sniffed the dried herbal sachets—lavender for the library, rose for the parlor, jasmine for Genie’s sitting room—and rapped on any number of walls. He’d engaged with the house more purposefully than some men engaged with their partners for the waltz.

  “What could he be doing over there?”

  He’d merely peered into her bedroom, an airy, high-ceilinged retreat featuring a bed large enough to hold most of Genie’s six brothers. She’d been seized with an impulse to lock the door and fling herself into Mr. Morecambe’s arms.

  “There will be none of that,” she muttered, rising. “Dunstable is underfoot, and any breath of scandal will reach his ears, and then where will I be?”

  The one consolation left to Genie, was that she was invited everywhere, had friends of varying degrees in most fashionable neighborhoods, and came and went as she pleased. She had worked long and hard and paid a very high price to be worthy of polite society’s acceptance. Should Dunstable make good on his threat to drag her name through the sewer, even those comforts would be gone.

  “But nothing says I must forgo an outing with a prospective neighbor,” she murmured, hand on the door latch. “I am a widow and have earned my freedom up to a point.”

  She crossed the corridor and paused outside the library long enough to rap softly on the paneled door.

  No response. Mr. Morecambe was likely absorbed in his sketching. What would it be like for him to focus on her? She had known one moment in his arms back in London, and those arms had been strong and sheltering.

  “I’d likely need a roof and shutters before he took any special notice of me.”

  She pushed open the library door to find her guest seated at the desk, boots propped on the corner, arms folded, chin on his chest. A gentle snore wafted across the room, and as the cat stropped himself across Genie’s ankles, she feasted on the sight of Adam Morecambe in shirt-sleeves, fast asleep.

  * * *

  A sharp rap on the door startled Adam from dreams of wooden flowers and freckled geese. His boots dropped to the floor, nearly clobbering an indignant orange cat.

  “Where did you come from?”

  The cat squinted, and the knock sounded again on the door, more firmly.

  “Come in.”

  The Duchess of Tindale presented herself, looking as feminine and pleasing as she had in Adam’s dreams, but wearing a good deal more clothing. He rose from behind the desk, holding his sketches in a manner intended to hide the evidence of his wayward imagination.

  “Mr. Morecambe.” She popped a brisk curtsey. “I’m looking in on you, as a hostess ought to. Do you have all you need?”

  “I apparently needed a nap,” he said. And a thorough dousing in the frigid Channel surf. “That is a diabolically comfortable chair.” He shrugged into his coat as casually as he could, though Her Grace had been married. A man in dishabille would hardly shock her.

  “I have remarked the same on the occasion of tending to my ledgers,” she said. “The combination of accounting and that chair induces sleep even first thing in the morning. I’ve sent off a note to Petworth House.”

  Petworth was the finest collection of interior woodcarving in all of England, possibly in all the world.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I hope Friday suits. Godmama’s gardener vows the weather will hold fair for the rest of the week. We can make a picnic of the outing.”

  She was inviting him on a tour of Petworth. Also, a picnic.

  With her.

  On the occasion of Adam’s first encounter with the duchess, he’d swept her into his arms to spare her a soaking. The contact had startled him. He’d not held a woman closely for ages, hadn’t wanted to. His every spare moment and thought went to building his business, and he liked it that way. Her Grace had tolerated the embrace for exactly two instants before she’d righted herself and shaken her skirts, but they had been lovely instants.

  She was sturdy, lively, and friendly. None of which explained why Adam wanted to kiss her.

  “I trust Lord and Lady Egremont will not be in residence?” he asked.

  “Off to Paris. We’ll have the place to ourselves.”

  To themselves and an army of servants. “Friday, you say?” Adam mentally re
arranged lunch with friends as well as four other appointments to see properties for sale.

  “Have you a conveyance?” she asked. “We can take my traveling carriage or the landau if the weather’s fine.”

  “I’ll drive,” Adam said, lest he find himself plodding through the countryside when the time could be better spent marveling at the wonders of Petworth. “Shall we leave around eight in the morning?”

  “Earlier than that,” she replied, rolling up his sketches and handing them to him. “We have the long hours of daylight, we might as well use them. Leave the picnic basket to me and plan on a lovely day.”

  “The crack of dawn, then,” he said, bowing over her hand as best he could with his sketches tucked under his arm. “I’ll look forward to it.”

  The prospect of a day bouncing along the lanes of Sussex had her beaming at him, and her pleasure turned an unremarkable countenance luminous. Her eyes lit with such benevolence, that Adam held on to her hand longer than was strictly proper. She had a subtle beauty, not the boring, cameo-perfect appearance of the typical titled lady, but a personal loveliness that would make the hours until Friday morning long.

  And busy.

  She saw Adam to the front door, where no servant sat in attendance collecting gossip and spying on the walkway.

  “Do you know,” Adam said, “I do believe you are my favorite duchess in the entire world.”

  “How many duchesses do you know, Mr. Morecambe?”

  “Two.” Not strictly true. As a youth, he’d once been introduced to the Duchess of Seymouth, who’d regarded him as so much dung clinging to her slipper.

  “You are my favorite architect.”

  “How many do you know?”

  She went up on her toes and brushed a kiss to his cheek. “One, and I am looking forward to getting to know him better.”

  Adam tapped his hat onto his head, accepted his walking stick from her, and left the house without even taking the time to examine the fine Palladian window above the lintel.

  * * *

  The hamper was packed—a hamper, not a mere basket—and Genie had dressed in her most fashionable carriage ensemble. The early hour was not a reflection of her enthusiasm for stately country houses, but rather, her need to leave Brighton unobserved.

  Mr. Morecambe’s chaise pulled up in front of the house before the sun had topped the horizon, while the world was still in that sweet, quiet, predawn gloom. Rather than make him come into the house, Genie met him on the walk.

  “Good morning, Mr. Morecambe. You are punctual.”

  He bowed over her hand. “Are you running away from home, Duchess? That looks more like a wicker trunk than a picnic basket.”

  Genie had longed to run away, back home to Derbyshire, which guilty thought had her climbing into the vehicle unassisted.

  “The day could be long, and who knows what fare will be available at the posting inns? Is this fine fellow yours?” The horse was a handsome bay, easily seventeen hands, no white on him anywhere.

  “Caliban will eat my oats and pretend he’s doing me a favor,” Mr. Morecambe said, setting the basket behind the seat and taking the place beside Genie. “We can leave him at the first change, let him rest all day, and pick him up on our way home. Move, horse.”

  With a flick of a dark tail, the gelding trotted on.

  Dunstable might have stayed at the Seymouth family property in Brighton, except his mama the duchess complained to all and sundry that the house was uninhabitable, a musty hovel built by an incompetent scoundrel.

  Having no family residence at his command, Dunstable was thus biding with his friend, Viscount Luddington, heir to the earl of the same title. Genie had made it her business to know that the viscount’s house lay on the opposite side of the Steyne from Godmama’s. No telling from whose bed Dunstable might be stumbling home at daybreak, though, so Genie tied her straw hat with a scarf, securing it to her head like a brimmed bonnet.

  “I should tell you that I am not highly regarded among some titled families,” Mr. Morecambe said.

  Interesting place to start a conversation. “Neither am I. I failed to produce a baby duke. What was your transgression?”

  He glanced over at her as the horse gained the fields at the edge of town. They’d drive mostly north, toward the Downs, and being away from even the genteel streets of Brighton helped Genie breathe more easily.

  “I am a commoner with airs above my station,” Mr. Morecambe said. “How long were you married?”

  “Five long years. You will think me awful, but becoming a duchess was not a pleasant adjustment. I was a gentry heiress—copper mining proved a very wise investment several generations back—and thus I was bound to marry a man with an impoverished title. My father was determined to see his progeny rise in the world, and I was determined to make my papa happy.”

  “That sounds like a fine ambition, to make your family happy. What does your father say now?”

  “Not a word. We laid him to rest three years ago. This is such a beautiful time of day.” Genie had forgotten how cheering, how fragrant with hope dawn was. She’d never quite lost the sense of having disappointed not only Charles, but also Papa, and to have this conversation so early in the day was especially painful.

  “Do you miss your husband?”

  The question was personal, also one Genie had considered many times. “Yes, and no. Charles was not a bad man, but he was an indifferent husband. He needed a duchess, a gracious, poised woman who could produce multiple sons in quick succession while making no demands of him that couldn’t be met from her pin money. I was a disappointment, and it took me some while to realize just how egregious my shortcomings were. I exasperated him, he bewildered me. I wanted a marriage, he wanted a secure succession.”

  The sun crested the surrounding hills as Caliban trotted through the first crossroads, and Mr. Morecambe steered the chaise smoothly onto the northward turning.

  “What could you miss about such a union?” he asked.

  “Charles was not much older than I, and in odd moments, I’d see the man he could become. He could be funny, he was generous with his friends, and would never insult me or upbraid me publicly. In his way, he was honorable. He simply expected the world to do as he bade and hadn’t much experience with frustration. Had there been a child, perhaps in time…”

  “Your story confirms my conclusion that dukes are a blight upon society, and we’d be better off without them.”

  Mr. Morecambe’s driving was deft and tactful, his opinion on dukes quite firmly stated. “You consign the entire senior branch of the peerage to perdition, Mr. Morecambe? Isn’t that a bit harsh?”

  The wind whipped the end of Genie’s scarf behind her, and the sun warmed her cheeks. Why had she gone to Brighton instead of home to Derbyshire?

  “I’d keep Wellington, and a few others, but a duke ruined my father. I haven’t much patience for the lot of them.”

  He leaned closer to make that admission, bringing with him the scent of lavender. He favored clean linen, then, and made conscientious use of soap and water. Fine qualities in a man.

  “Is there a scandal I should know about?” Genie asked, though any warning he offered was coming at least two miles too late, if that was the case.

  “A quiet scandal, the worst kind, because then nobody champions the outcast. He’s left to slink away, hoping the rumors die down along with his fortunes. Papa built a fine dwelling just as Brighton was becoming truly popular, and the duke not only refused to pay, he claimed Papa had done shoddy work. Papa was old-fashioned. He never built a house he wouldn’t be proud to live in, and the work was anything but shoddy.”

  “But the damage was done,” Genie said. “His reputation in tatters, and then nobody else felt compelled to pay him or to hire him. That is a dreadful tale, Mr. Morecambe.”

  “A tale you believe.”

  “Oh yes. When a man is seldom told no, or not now, or not at that price, he develops little patience or understanding. Such a man
can either be grateful for the privileges of his station, or he can be a complete donkey’s arse. Your papa’s client doubtless had solicitors, barristers, and even judges in his pocket, while your father had a family to feed. I’m sorry your father ran afoul of a donkey’s arse. Tell me how you came to build your gentlemen’s club.”

  By degrees and questions, Genie drew him out, until it was time for the first change. She heard a tale of hard work, determination, sound investment, and more hard work, as well as several panegyrics to houses that had enthralled Mr. Morecambe.

  “How can a house enthrall?” Genie asked as they trotted away from the posting inn. “A house is a place to get out of the wet, to take meals, or to sleep. A fine idea, but not… not enthralling.”

  He clucked to the horse, a gray this time. “Consider that vent in your parlor, the one that lets warm air waft up from the kitchen. That is genius, Your Grace. The bane of every soul in Britain the livelong winter is cold feet, and some mason, architect, or apprentice noticed that if a gap was allowed just so in a wall and a vent placed thus, the people in that one parlor in all of England would have warm feet, and without roasting their boots by the fire. I’m enthralled by such ingenuity.”

  And when he was enthralled, Mr. Morecambe became animated, charming even.

  “Might I ask for a slight innovation where our dealings are concerned, sir?”

  “You may ask.”

  Caution was usually a virtue, but Genie wasn’t feeling cautious. She was feeling like herself for the first time in years.

  “Will you call me Genie when we are private? This business of your-gracing and her-gracing, when I’m really not much more than a farmer’s daughter, has long struck me as ridiculous. I’m Genie to my friends, and I hope we are to become friends.”

  He drove along in silence, and once again, Genie feared she’d blundered and failed to grasp soon enough the extent of her error.

  “You truly do not like being a duchess, do you?” he asked.

  “If I answer honestly, I’m the most ungrateful fool in the realm. Every little girl aspires to be a duchess.”