“Why, that would be lovely, my dear.” She glanced around her, perplexed. “What Duke?”
BY THE time Montford managed to wash, have his trunks hauled from the carriage and fresh clothes procured, the sun was going down, and any vestige of patience he had was lost. The journey had been a nightmare. His arrival had been a nightmare. He hardly knew why he had come any longer and was beginning to wonder how he was ever going to get back to London. He didn’t think he could stand to ever set foot in a carriage again. It would take days – weeks – months – for his nerves and stomach to recover. Now he was stuck here. In a crooked castle. With pigs. And Honeywells.
Coombes’ hands were trembling so violently it took ten tries before he managed a proper cravat. When Coombes attempted to brush the lint from his jacket, Montford’s patience snapped. “Leave it.”
“But sir, I …”
He fixed Coombes with a glower that had once cowed the whole of Parliament into passing an unpopular bill – damn those smug Whig upstarts – and Coombes backed away, the brush falling from his hands.
A knock sounded on the door, and the blowsy woman called Flora peeked inside. She seemed more sensible than the rest of the household and gave him an uncertain curtsy. “Yer Grace, Miss Honeywell and … ah, Miss Honeywell kindly request your presence in the parlor. Erm … Yer Grace.” She bobbed a curtsy again.
He gifted her with a hard stare. She turned and fled.
He rounded on Coombes, who was still trembling. “Make yourself useful and try to find Stevenage.”
Coombes’ eyes widened to saucers. “Your Grace!” he whined.
Montford cocked an eyebrow. Coombes lowered his head in despair. “Yes, Your Grace.”
With a growl, Montford strode outside the bedroom and down a corridor. Only when he reached a wall with no exit did he realize he hadn’t a damned clue where he was going. He turned around and began in the opposite way. Eventually he came to a stairwell that looked somewhat familiar and descended to the bottom floor.
After several wrong turns and a dozen muttered oaths, he finally reached an open door with light beyond it. He looked around the edge of the door and found himself staring into the cluttered parlor he had entered earlier in the day. A fire was lit in the grate, and the old-fashioned wall sconces blazed with light, casting flickering shadows around the room.
Two women sat by the fire. One was the old woman with the enormous French pompadour. The other was initially unfamiliar, dressed in a shabby-looking gown that must have once been green. It was modestly cut but looked ill-fitting and a shade too small on the woman’s rounded, voluptuous body. He hadn’t the foggiest clue why such an ugly garment should make him sizzle with heat and could only assume that it was due to starvation. He’d not eaten since breakfast, and all of that meal was strewn about the roadside running south.
But then the woman rose to her feet, and the fire caught in her blood-red hair, which was haphazardly wound and pinned in a crooked bun at the nape of her neck. Recognition flooded through him. The pig-woman from the garden. Of course. She seemed to be in charge around this godforsaken place.
She graced him with a perfectly executed curtsy, which niggled him, because he somehow knew she was mocking him. “Your Grace. How lovely for you to join us.”
The old woman didn’t bother to rise but peered at him through a quizzing glass. “Is this a Duke, then, Astrid?” the woman inquired in a stage whisper.
“Yes, aunt,” the woman answered, never looking away from him, her lips curving into an enigmatic smile, her mismatched eyes dancing with deviltry, daring him to set down an old lady.
The old woman bobbed up and down in her seat with delight. “Oh, what fun!” she exclaimed. She gestured towards the Duke. “Well, come here, young man, and let’s have a look at you.”
Montford found his legs moving forward of their own accord. The old woman leaned forward in her seat and gave him a once over with her monocle. Her gaze paused right in the vicinity of his nether regions. Then she dropped her quizzing glance and turned to the other woman. “He looks like a man to me, gel.”
“My good woman…” he began, clenching his fists.
“Your Grace, please have a seat. You must be exhausted after your … ordeal,” the younger woman cut in, indicating a rather threadbare settee near the fire.
Montford was suddenly too tired to protest, and he crossed the room and sat down stiffly.
The redhead settled in the seat across from him. “I am Miss Honeywell. And this is my aunt, Miss Honeywell,” she said, inclining her head towards the old woman. “We are honored, of course, that you have deigned to grace us with your illustrious presence. Tea? Biscuit?” She gestured towards the table in front of them.
Oh, God, she was mocking him all over the bloody place. The little … “Miss Honeywell …” he began.
“However,” she interjected, ignoring him completely and reaching for the teapot, “I am sure it was completely unnecessary for His Grace to come all this way over a misunderstanding that could have been easily rectified by post.”
He watched in horror as she commenced to pour the tea without the slightest delicacy over the table, managing to get more onto the surrounding saucers and tray than the actual cups.
Clearly she’d not gone to a finishing school where ladies were taught the proper way to handle a teapot.
“Do you take sugar, Your Grace? No? Milk? Of course you do.” She upturned a pitcher of milk over the edge of the cup, until the liquid sloshed over the top. Then she stirred it half-heartedly, tossed the spoon aside, and rose to hand him the offending cup.
He took it in hand because he was certain she would let it drop on his lap if he didn’t. He took a deep, calming breath, and returned to the subject at hand. “Miss Honeywell, I am sure I don’t know what you mean, as I am quite certain the post does not reach you.”
“Oh, but it does,” she assured him.
“Since I have sent nearly two dozen letters to this address in the past fortnight without a response, I am sure it does not.”
She gazed at him innocently and sipped her tea. “But I have received no letters from Your Grace. Perhaps they were misdirected.”
“I did not send them to you. I sent them to Stevenage.”
“That would explain it,” she said, though, really, it explained nothing to his mind. “Madame, the Royal Mail aside, I see no misunderstanding between us. The terms of the contract are quite clear, to my mind.”
“Contract?” she asked, looking perplexed. She dropped four cubes of sugar into another cup and poured it to the brim with milk. She stirred it neatly and handed it over to the old woman. “Biscuit, aunt?”
“Why, yes. Two. Young man, you must have a biscuit,” the old woman stated. “They are quite simply delicious. Astrid makes them herself.” She beamed at the younger woman.
“No, thank you.” He refused to be distracted, despite his gnawing hunger. “Miss Honeywell, you know quite well what contract I speak of, as you yourself made reference to it earlier in the day.”
“I do not recall having made reference to any contract. Wouldn’t you like a biscuit? You must be famished after the journey. Your long, unnecessary journey. They are quite good, and I do make them myself. An old recipe from my Scotch grandmother.” She stuck the tray of biscuits under his nose.
He began to wave it away, but the smell of butter and sugar and vanilla wafted to his nostrils, causing his empty stomach to protest in agony. He took one with a great show of reluctance and bit into it.
And was immediately transported to heaven.
The crumbs melted on his tongue in a symphony of sweet, buttered perfection. He barely suppressed a groan, closed his eyes and leaned back against the seat, his body suddenly boneless.
He forgot everything, including who he was, until the biscuit was devoured. Then he opened his eyes and found the redhead regarding him with a quizzical expression. He straightened, reality crashing back down on his shoulders. Damn. She was good.
“Miss Honeywell, I shall not be sidetracked. I am here to…”
“Astrid!” came a strident call from the hallway, cutting him off. Another female entered the room in a rush. He vaguely recognized her from the yard and knew immediately it was another Honeywell. Clearly a near relation to the redhead, but younger, taller, with hair more auburn than red, and prettier, dressed in a becoming muslin gown. Her eyes widened when she noticed him, and she skidded to a halt.
Miss Honeywell rose. The courtesy pounded into him since the cradle demanded that he rise as well.
“Your Grace, may I present my sister, Miss Alice Honeywell,” Miss Honeywell said.
Miss Alice curtsied prettily and not at all mockingly. He approved of her immediately.
“What is it, Alice?” Miss Honeywell asked.
“It’s Petunia. He’s in the cabbage again.”
“Well, set Charlie on him, or Mick.”
“I would, but they’ve gone to the brewery with … er …” Alice glanced nervously at him. “Roddy.”
As he hadn’t a clue as to what they were talking about, he wondered why Alice was so nervous.
Miss Honeywell looked perturbed. “Well, damn and blast … I mean, heavens. What a muddle. Find Ant and Art, then, and set them to it.”
Alice grimaced. “If I could find them, I would.”
Miss Honeywell set down her teacup in consternation. “I’ll not wrangle with that pig another moment. You know he hates me and eats my cabbage to spite me.”
“Madame, your pig is named Petunia?” he interjected.
All eyes swung to him.
“Why, yes,” she said.
“And he is a male … er, pig?”
“Why, yes.” Miss Honeywell blinked, as if he were silly for even asking.
“I’ve landed in Bedlam,” he muttered. Then he reached down and took up another biscuit.
“Well, what about the coachman,” Miss Honeywell said, turning towards him. “Your driver, or whatever it is you call him. Would you think that he would be willing to assist us?”
He barked out a hysterical half-laugh, and bit into his biscuit. He was light-headed with hunger, bone-tired from casting up his accounts for three days solid, and surrounded by lunatics, his only consolation a biscuit. And he was having a conversation about livestock. “Of course. I am sure Newcomb would like nothing better than to assist you, Miss Alice,” he said archly.
“Well, then it’s settled,” Miss Honeywell said. “Find Mr. Newcomb and see if he will lend a hand.”
Alice nodded and scurried to the door. She hesitated at the threshold, turned, and curtsied in his direction before exiting.
“Now, where were we?” Miss Honeywell asked, swinging her attention back in his direction.
“I believe you were attempting to gammon me, Miss Honeywell.”
“Gammon you!” she breathed, her color heightening in affront. “I am sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“Gammon. As in make a fool of,” he clarified.
“I should not think such a thing possible, Your Grace. You are clearly not a fool.”
He could not tell by her dry tone whether she was mocking him or not, but he decided to err on the side of caution and assume she was.
He set down his biscuit – reluctantly, as he was quite ravenous now – and gifted her with his frostiest expression.
She did not so much as flinch under his gaze. Which did not seem possible, as everyone, even Sherbrook on occasion, flinched at that look.
And then her brassy hair had the effrontery to begin to fall out of its bun a strand at a time, then in ever larger clumps, until half of it was dangling down her back and the other half remained pinned in place, giving her a lopsided look that made him seriously consider howling.
She was just so completely wrong on so many levels it quite astounded him that the gods had allowed such a creature to exist. It seemed a fundamental crime against nature.
But Miss Honeywell did not seemed bothered in the slightest by the atrocity taking place on her head.
“Miss Honeywell,” he began.
She cocked a brow.
“Miss Honeywell, your hair.” It came out as a pained groan.
She reached up, patted the side of her bun that had not fallen down, and furrowed her brow. “What about my hair?”
“It is …”
She drew herself up to her full height, which put her no further than his collarbone, and fixed him with a stare of pure feminine outrage. “What is wrong with my hair?”
“It is red …”
“Hardly a sin.”
“And it is falling down.”
She crossed her arms over her breasts, completely ignoring her hair, and gave him a superior look. “I shall excuse your behavior because of your long journey. Surely, when you are well rested, you shall recover your gentlemanly manners and realize that one does not remark upon a lady’s person, no matter what the state of her hair.”
That was when he made his worst mistake of the evening. He snorted and said disbelievingly, “Lady?”
She froze, her jaw jutting out, her mismatched eyes glinting with a fire that had nothing to do with the flames in the grate. Something inside of him wilted.
She stalked towards him, and he looked nervously about the room, though his rational mind –what was left of it – told him he would find nothing to aid him against the approaching harridan. He glanced at Aunt Anabel, but she had dozed off into her teacup, her wig halfway down her forehead.
“I’ll have you know, Lord High and Mighty Montford, that I am more lady than you are a gentleman. Storming into my household, threatening to throw us out on our noses –”
“I have done no such –”
“ – my poor aunt in her dotage, who has known no other home, and four unmarried ladies, with nowhere else to go but the workhouse. It is cruel and inhuman, but what else should I expect from a Montford? And how dare you question my … my upbringing? I am every inch the lady. I am the daughter of a gentleman, sirrah, and a lady. My mother was the daughter of an Earl, as a matter of fact. And Honeywells owned this land centuries before your barbarian ancestors crossed the seas wielding their cudgels and cutting up our peace.”
By the end of her tirade, she was inches from him, poking her finger into his chest. Which was quite insupportable, really. The last person who had poked him –Marlowe – had wound up with a broken nose.
“I beg your pardon. I must have been confused by the trousers you were wearing earlier. And the pig. And all of the swearing. Perhaps this is how ladies behave in Yorkshire?” he bit out, heat flooding his veins, his head throbbing.
He seized her hand to shove it away, which was his second mistake of the evening, because when his skin touched her skin, he felt as if lightning had shot from the heavens, through the crooked castle walls, and right into the place that they were joined, ricocheting through the rest of his body without pity.
He nearly swooned. Like a besotted London chit in a too-tight corset.
“Your Grace,” Miss Honeywell whispered. “Montford.”
He opened his eyes and looked at her. She was looking at him with the same befuddled and slightly panicked intensity that he was feeling. Then he looked down and realized he was squeezing her hand so tightly his knuckles were white.
He dropped her hand and stepped back. “Miss Honeywell.”
“Your Grace.”
“I am tired. And hungry. And about three seconds away from throttling someone. I would like a bed. And some food.” And a wall to bash my head against. “If, of course, it is not too much to ask.”
She looked as if it was entirely too much to ask. “No, certainly not. We can continue our delightful conversation tomorrow morning. Before you leave.”
He laughed without humor, realizing that at this moment, despite the mud and the shrewish woman before him, wrangling with this nest of vipers was slightly more appealing than hopping back into the carriage.
He would look into acquiring a m
ount. Perhaps riding back to London, despite the mud and the threat of rain and highwaymen, might be the best way put an end to this ill-advised jaunt. But in the meanwhile, he was going to fix the muddle at Rylestone and get the Honeywells out of his Miscellaneous Pile for good. “Oh, I am not leaving, Miss Honeywell. As much as we both might wish otherwise, I am staying here until we come to an understanding.”
She gave him an arch look. “Then I am afraid, Your Grace, that you’ll be staying until, oh, say, hell freezes over.”
Aunt Anabel started awake with a snort, her wig snapping back into place. “Astrid, my dear, really. Do mind your tongue. We have a Duke hereabouts.”
He was standing right in front of the old lady, not hereabouts, but he wasn’t about to quibble with her sound advice. “Yes, Astrid, do mind your tongue,” he murmured.
Miss Honeywell shot him a fulminating look, turned on her heel, and marched from the room.
He followed in her wake, and it took every ounce of his remaining self-control not to seize her by the shoulders and pin her hair back into place before … before …
Good God. He must be thoroughly done in. Because for a moment, he’d had the strangest desire to kiss Miss Honeywell senseless.
He shuddered in revulsion and pinched himself, in case this was some horrible nightmare after all.
But he didn’t wake up.
Chapter Five
IN WHICH THE DUKE ENJOYS RYLESTONE HALL’S AMENITIES
THE INMATES of Rylestone Hall were used to waking at dawn. But usually they were coaxed from pleasant dreams by the vocal gymnastics of Chanticleer IV, proud descendant of Chanticleer I, Alyosius Honeywell’s prize cock. They were not so used to waking up to bloodcurdling screams, however.
Astrid, who had not had pleasant dreams, and who had, in fact, spent most of the night dreaming about being chased by a twenty-foot tall monster resembling the Duke of Montford during the village’s upcoming annual Harvest Festival’s foot-and-ale-race, came awake with a start, followed by a thud.
The Duke's Holiday Page 6