A Damsel for the Daring Duke_A Historical Regency Romance

by Bridget Barton

  They had been swiftly swept aside as if they had never been to dine at Sandford Hall. James knew that was just the way of things when a man of his status was looking for a wife, and it would be accepted amongst all competitors that they might be easily dismissed.

  And yet still he could not help thinking that it was a dreadful way to treat people. It was true that he had no particular fondness for Lady Felicia Trent and her perpetual corrections, but he was sure that she still had feelings, as any human might. Her own pride was as susceptible to wounding as anybody else’s.

  Of course, James knew he had his own part to play in it all by continuing in his ruse. Only now he had turned his spurious attention on Lady Penelope Colchester and, inevitably, she would be swept aside too.

  He had to admit, whilst Penelope was a quiet young woman, he did not think that she would be as affected by it all as Lady Felicia might. He could not make out Penelope’s true character at all, thinking that she surely could not be as agreeable in everything as she appeared.

  She simply agreed with every word he said, and he found that somehow more distasteful than Lady Felicia’s perpetual disagreement.

  And it led him to ridicule her a little at times, saying the silliest things to see if she would disagree.

  But whether or not it was in Lady Penelope’s nature to wholeheartedly agree with everything he said, it did not give him the right to mock. She was no more than a pawn on a chess board, something which he himself resented when it applied to him, and he owed her a little more respect. Especially since this was all designed to keep suspicion away from his door, with no intentions at all towards Lady Penelope herself.

  Still, the fact that his father continued to be agreeable was, he thought, a little disconcerting. Even when James was doing just as his father wanted, the Duke was usually still a bluff and grumbling man.

  It was just in Richard Harrington’s nature to be perpetually displeased with life and everything in it, and so the idea that he felt a little more fondly towards his son for acceding to his wishes on this occasion did not seem to hold water.

  But James could not entirely put the pleasing change in character down to his father’s suspicions either, for that did not seem to fit at all.

  His father was not a man who could keep his own counsel, and if he had any suspicions surrounding James and his perpetual absences, the old Duke would surely come right out with them. He was not a man who could hide his feelings particularly well, and so James was almost confident that things were on an even keel, for the time being at least.

  Only almost, because he could not rule out that his father was playing as much of a role as he was. Perhaps James was not the only one who felt himself to be an actor upon a stage; perhaps his father was learning a little something about the craft himself.

  Still, there was currently nothing he could do about any of it. He was not far enough along in his acquaintance with Charlotte, and she was not so enamoured of Dukes and other such similar men of title that she would agree to anything. And so, he knew he must carry on as he was doing, all the while trying to further the closeness between them.

  In the end, James had managed to get no sleep whatsoever. Much apart from his vague concerns about his father, his mind continually drifted to pleasing images of Charlotte with her slightly uneven, slightly sardonic smile, her beautiful blue eyes, and her slightly too-red hair. And her confident bearing and generous curves did nothing to keep his thoughts in a straight line.

  How was a man to get a moment’s rest with such a beautiful creature locked inside his mind?

  When it came to getting ready for the evening, a somewhat jaded James left many of the decisions to his valet. Samuel Jones, knowing his master well and having many years’ experience looking after him, made all the right decisions, just as James had known he would.

  The result was that James was very pleased with his appearance and allowed himself a moment or two of vanity to admire the result in the long, oval mirror.

  His tailcoat, breeches, and boots, were of the deepest, most immaculate black imaginable. The tailcoat was a new one, and his tailor had cut it to perfection.

  His waistcoat was new also, being crafted from a very fine material that was almost golden in colour. The effect was both striking and austere, and with his thick dark hair neatly cut, and his chin freshly shaven, Lord Harrington looked very well indeed, and he knew it.

  Finally, when he was sure he looked as smart as he possibly could, he set off to meet Hector and Lawrence in the drawing room before the evening began.

  Finally, Charles Holt had seen exactly what he had been hoping for. In truth, he had seen far more than he had been hoping for, and now all that remained was to identify the lady in question.

  He had, just as the Duke had demanded, hired a trustworthy driver to take him over to the east of the county.

  Charles had made no bones of the fact that they were there to watch somebody, and that they must not be seen at any price. He also made it very clear that he was paying for the man’s discretion as much as his driving, and that that payment would be very handsome indeed if the man proved to be trustworthy.

  They had made their initial approach on the first day as dusk was drawing down. Charles realized it would not be a productive start, but he wanted to get a better look at Hanover Hall in the relative cover of the falling darkness.

  Hanover Hall was in a beautiful, rural location, and there was very little else for miles around. Charles immediately realized that they might have some little trouble in disguising their intentions, especially when he discovered that there was only one road leading to the hall itself and that it ended there.

  However, the driver very quickly proved to be worth his weight in gold, locating a patch of hard ground behind some thick foliage where the small carriage might easily be hidden.

  Once Charles was satisfied that their vantage point was not overlooked by any window at the hall, he instructed the driver to take up position whilst he himself continued on foot to look more closely at the hall.

  Given that anybody visiting or leaving Hanover Hall would need to pass their little vantage point, Charles knew it did not really matter if he had a firm knowledge of the land. Still, his master had given him a very important responsibility, and he was determined to execute it to the very best of his abilities.

  On that first evening, once Charles had familiarized himself with the area entirely, he waited in the vantage point for no more than two hours. It was getting late, and it was clear that either Lord Harrington was staying in the hall itself for the night or he was already out, and the only thing they would glean from an extended vigil would be his return from wherever he had been.

  Essentially, that would tell him nothing, and so Charles decided that they should return the following day and begin the exercise in earnest.

  And what a day it had been, for James Harrington rode past them on horseback in the early afternoon. He looked smart and well-dressed, and Charles thought it much more likely that he had been invited somewhere for afternoon tea than that he was simply going out for a ride.

  Charles felt a little nervous giving Lord Harrington some headway but knew that he could not risk that sharp young man realizing he was being followed.

  Still, they managed to keep him in sight and followed him to a small manor house just a few miles away. Charles was inordinately relieved that James Harrington had not determined to cut across country, for it was clear that he could have done. As fate would have it, he had kept to the main roads, and it had been an easy matter for Charles’ driver to follow him.

  And very likely the Duke’s son had not wanted to get his smart clothes dirty by cutting through the fields. More and more, it seemed as if Charles was on the right scent; surely a man determined to keep clean by adding miles to his journey had some reason for it. Charles could not help hoping that the reason was a young lady.

  After James had turned in towards the little manor, Charles realized that it wou
ld not be an easy thing to keep an eye on him from the outside. It was a rambling old Manor house with equally rambling grounds, in the style of so many quaint little places in the county.

  But there was too much of interest and not enough by way of wide open spaces, with rose bushes, rhododendrons, and clematis everywhere, not to mention box hedging and laurel. From the point of view of secretly studying somebody, this manor was most unsuitable. He could not get a clear view of the old place from any angle at all.

  As much as it unsettled him, Charles knew that he could not hover in the area. Instead, he instructed his driver to head back towards the village they had driven through to get there.

  He would make some enquiries there and discover the name of the small estate and, therefore, its owner.

  In the end, it was his driver who proved to be the most useful, once again. Charles had been viewing the village from the window of the carriage, wondering quite how he might go about finding the information he sought. After all, in such a small village, his enquiries might seem a little suspicious.

  If there had been a single professional looking establishment in the place, Charles Holt would not have thought twice about entering it, but as far as he could see, it was just a small village in the same vein as many other villages; insular and unsophisticated.

  It was his driver’s idea to make enquiries in the local hostelry, declaring that it was always best to find a drunk man in need of a drink when a person needed information.

  Knowing that he would stand out in such a place, Charles had remained in the carriage and handed his driver some coins with which to buy himself, and hopefully their source of information, something to drink.

  Charles waited anxiously in the carriage, imagining one moment how he might soon be furnishing the Duke with some excellent information and, in the next, worrying that he would discover nothing at all.

  “I must say, that took rather longer than I was expecting,” Charles snapped when his driver returned more than an hour later.

  “Begging your pardon, Sir, but whilst I found a suitable drinking partner almost immediately, he was not quite drunk enough in the beginning.” The driver looked chagrined in a way which made Charles puff up a little with pride.

  He always liked to deal with people whom he fully considered to be beneath him, for it gave him such a sense of power. No doubt the same sense of power that the Duke felt when dealing with him.

  “Well, what have you found? Was it worth the drinking money I handed you?”

  “I believe so, Sir,” the driver said steadily, and it was clear to Charles that the man had barely touched a drop of liquor himself. Well, at least he had not taken advantage. “The estate is called Thurlow Manor, Sir, and it is owned by a Baron, Lord Cunningham. The man lives there with his daughter and a handful of staff.”

  “I see,” Charles said, feeling success just within his grasp.

  “And I am afraid that is all I was able to find out, Sir,” the driver mumbled.

  “But that is very good,” Charles said, feeling suddenly magnanimous in his little victory. “No, no, you have done very well indeed.”

  “Will you be heading back to Thurlow Manor now, Sir?” the driver asked.

  “No, I think we will take up our position at Hanover again, my dear fellow. Perhaps it would be an idea to take note of the time the young man returns and, indeed, lay in wait should he make his way out again this evening.”

  By the time Charles saw James Harrington return, it was growing dusk once again. He had clearly spent a good deal of his afternoon at Thurlow Manor, and Charles could only hope that his intention of being there had been towards the daughter.

  Unfortunately, Charles could not entirely dismiss the idea that the Duke’s son had some connection to the Baron. Perhaps they were friends or had some little matter of business between them.

  It would be just like James Harrington to be so complicated and exasperating. The very thought of it was beginning to annoy Charles because he could not bear the idea that there might be nothing to be found at all, that his master’s suspicions might be groundless.

  He knew that the Duke would, in the end, be pleased and relieved if there was no lady here in the east at all, and no complicated romantic matter to attend to. Certainly, his master would not see it as a failure on Charles’s part, that was certain.

  But it would disappoint Charles greatly. He wanted this. He wanted to be silently instrumental in bringing Lord Harrington’s little world crashing down around his ears. And not once did it occur to him to examine his own reasons for wanting such a thing. He did not like James Harrington because he was his mother’s son, a person of intelligence who knew he was intelligent, just as the Duchess had been.

  Apart from the idea that his work at the Duchy might cease in years to come, Charles really had nothing more to base his hatred upon. But Charles was not a man of reflection; he was a man of reaction, and he cared nothing for whether or not his opinion of the young man was fair. His opinion was as it was, and that was all there was to it.

  Charles decided that they would wait in the cover of the vantage point to see if Lord Harrington made his way out for the evening. Although he had concluded that he had made great progress in a single day, perhaps there might be even more to be made.

  However, the longer he waited, the hungrier he grew, and the hungrier he grew, the more unreasonable he became.

  He silently cursed his master’s son for his own lack of preparation and his own hunger, and he very nearly decided to call an end to their observations for the evening when he heard the sound of approaching hooves and carriage wheels.

  Charles edged his way through the foliage, determined to get a good look at the occupants of the carriage and knowing that he would benefit from the cover of darkness as much as anything else.

  He could see the Duke’s son in the back of the carriage with two other men. Although it was dark, and his concentration had been fully upon James, Charles thought he could safely assume that the others were Hector and Lawrence Hanover.

  Once again, he gave his driver instructions to follow them at some distance.

  Chapter 12

  James, Hector, and Lawrence Hanover arrived among the last of the guests at Morley Hall. Lawrence, an older and slightly more serious version of his son, did not like to stand at the back of a long queue.

  The result was that whenever the three of them went anywhere together, they either arrived horribly early or slightly too late, as both approaches would result in a reduction of the crowd.

  “Well, that was nice and simple,” Lawrence Hanover said with a chuckle after what he obviously saw as a most pleasingly brief greeting from Lord Morley, a man who had clearly stood at his own door for so long he was now tired of it.

  “Yes, I must say that I favour your approach, Lawrence,” James said with amusement.

  “It is the only way to go, my dear boy,” Lawrence replied, describing the son of the Duke of Sandford in the same terms he had always used.

  Not that James minded at all, he was inordinately fond of Lawrence Hanover. How nice it would have been to have a father with a fine sense of humour, one who paid so much less attention to the things he probably ought to have done.

  “Oh look, there is Oliver Daventry,” Hector said significantly. “You have some matter to discuss with him, do you not, Father?”

  “Oh yes, yes I do,” Lawrence said, successfully diverted. “Now, I am sure that the two of you will manage without me for a while.” He nodded his departure before hurrying across the ballroom.

  “I must say, that was rather clumsily done, Hector,” James said and grinned at his old friend.

  “Clumsy or not, my trusting parent fell for it.” Hector laughed. “In any case, he has been blithering on about Oliver Daventry all week and how he must seek him out for some reason or other. And I can hardly believe you are criticizing, my dear fellow when it was all done for your sake.”

  “I know, my manners are appall
ing of late,” James said, his eyes scouring the room for any sign of her. “I am, of course, grateful.” He bowed dramatically.

  “Oh, how very kind,” Hector said with friendly sarcasm. “Anyway, is there any sign of your quarry?”

  “Quarry? You make me sound like quite the predator.” James was grinning.

  “And are you not?”

  “No, I am not,” James went on. “Charlotte Cunningham is by no means the sort of woman one might consider prey. She is far too quick and clever to be such.”

  “My dear fellow, she really has opened up your chest and climbed inside, has she not?”

  “As indelicate as the phrasing is, Hector, yes, I believe you are right. She has.” The moment he set eyes on her, his whole demeanor changed.