“Not at all. Lady Constance is a pleasure,” Miss Cavendish replied in a firm tone that did not welcome further inquiry.
He repressed an inward groan. He was not particularly known for his charm, but he rarely found himself incapable of engaging another person in civil pleasantries. Was she nervous in his company? It had been years since he’d been alone with such a pretty woman. Perhaps he had erred in agreeing to drive her home without some form of chaperone. But then, they were in an open carriage on a sunny afternoon on a well-traveled road, and she was not a newly minted miss, but a seasoned nurserywoman with clients across the countryside. The rules of trade did not adhere to the rules of the drawing room, and a woman of her reputation as a supplier of plants would surely not be unaccustomed to dealing with men on her own authority.
Which likely meant he was the problem. She trained her eyes upon his profile pensively, confirming his suspicion that Westhaven had already succeeded in making him visibly insane.
“Forgive me, but I can’t shake the sense that we have met before, Your Grace.”
He shook his head, mildly relieved that she had at last said words unbidden.
“Not that I recall.” He had never seen her face before the moment he had sent a potted plumeria crashing toward it. It was not one he would easily forget.
“Is it not possible we were introduced in the past? Perhaps you knew my late uncle?”
“I’m afraid I did not have that privilege.”
He had spent his youth buried in books when he was not away at school. Mingling with the local gentry had been his elder brother’s job as heir.
“I must be mistaken.” She wrapped her arms tightly around her chest. He saw gooseflesh along the back of her wrist beneath the faded ribbon of her cuff.
“Are you warm enough?”
“Yes,” she said through chattering teeth.
“You’re shivering,” he could not resist observing.
“I forgot my cloak,” she admitted darkly, like he had won a concession.
He was tempted to smile. Her stubbornness reminded him not a little of himself.
“Here, hold the reins.” He handed her the horses, which she accepted capably, and reached below the seat for the soft, woolen shawl kept there by his sister. “Take this.”
After a brief hesitation she accepted it, arranging it gingerly around her plain gray dress. He wondered at her choice of garments. She had the polished speech of a noblewoman, yet dressed like a farmer’s daughter. He had been distantly familiar with Bantham Park in his youth and knew her uncle had been a comfortable squire. That she chose to engage in trade and work out of doors surely won her no approbation from the genteel residents of Wiltshire.
He supposed he could forgive her for being rather brittle and unfriendly, the mysterious Miss Cavendish. He was well aware that the satisfactions to be won by flouting the customs of society did not come without a price. He had spent the better part of the last two decades paying it himself.
She pointed at a wooded path so narrow and overgrown it barely qualified as a road. “Turn here.”
“Bantham Park is miles off,” he corrected her, not bothering to slow the horses.
“I’m going to Greenwoods House. My new nursery. Quick, you’ll miss the turn.”
He swerved onto a narrow path, ducking to avoid being smacked in the head by passing branches.
“Might I ask why you are moving your nursery into the middle of an inaccessible forest?”
“This is a shortcut.”
She was skirting the question.
“Actually, Miss Cavendish, I am curious why you are moving your nursery at all. Your plants seemed to be thriving as they are at Bantham Park.”
She glanced at him as though deciding whether she could trust him with her private business. Evidently, she ruled against it. “The reasons are personal, but I assure you they are sound.”
“By my reckoning, if you were to add a few more weeks to your schedule, there would be less risk of error.”
“I appreciate your concern, Your Grace,” she said with a glacial, insincere politeness that would make his sister proud.
He rubbed his temple. He was clumsy. Irritating her had not been his intention. There was a reason he was called the Merchant Duke. Efficiency in business was his particular passion, the way some men were obsessed with horse racing or Egyptology.
The path widened, revealing several acres of farmland in the clearing. A dilapidated wooden cottage sat in the middle, its boards peeling, several windows lacking panes of glass. To the side was a crumbling old stable, and beyond it the foundations of several smaller buildings, freshly laid.
Here was at least part of the explanation for her urgent need for laborers: her new nursery was, as far as he could see, not yet built.
He stopped the horses in front of the shabby old house.
“Miss Cavendish?”
“Yes?”
“How do you plan to move the contents of your greenhouse when this property lacks a greenhouse to move them to?”
“Your men are going to build me one, Your Grace. Thank you for driving me.” She hopped down from the curricle without waiting for his assistance. “Good evening.”
He stared down at her.
“You can’t think that I am going to leave you here.” It was approaching dusk, and the house, as far as he could tell, was deserted.
“I’ll be fine. ’Tis a short walk back to Bantham Park from here. Two miles.”
He smiled at her with icy patience. “Take your time. I’ll wait.”
She shrugged and disappeared behind the house. He amused himself by stepping down to the path and peeking inside the front door of the cottage. If the place looked uninhabitable from the outside, it looked worse from within. Cobwebs, collapsed floorboards, damp stains, mice. He would have a word with Grouse. If she intended to inhabit this firetrap, it would need more than fifteen men to restore it in a fortnight.
He returned to the curricle and arranged himself in front of the reins as though he’d never left, sensing she would not look fondly on him prowling around her grounds uninvited.
She surprised him by returning in a quarter hour sporting a blinding smile. God’s nails, the transformation. She was so lovely that he had to prevent himself from staring.
She accepted his hand and swung into her seat. “It’s actually astonishing, how much they’ve accomplished in one day.”
“I expected no less than perfection,” he said, tightening his jaw to keep from beaming right back at her. It would not do to seem giddy, but after two days of pure peevishness, he felt like a boy who’d finally wrested approval from an exacting governess.
The feeling did not last. Her mouth returned to its downturned resting place. They made the rest of the drive to Bantham Park in silence.
Miss Cavendish allowed him to help her down. “Thank you for driving me. Good night.”
He watched as she made her way inside. The house was dark, with only a servant’s lamp burning in the kitchen.
Everything else was sheer chaos.
The orderly scene he’d encountered the day before was now in a state of bedlam. Grouse’s men had wasted no time uprooting trees, hauling off crates in carts, making tracks in the soil. It looked like the place had been ransacked by a roving pack of thieves.
The question was, why?
Why risk such haste?
He made a mental note to speak to Grouse. If Miss Cavendish was in some kind of trouble, it would be best to know the nature of her circumstances before the Westmead name was hopelessly entangled.
For looking at these grounds, one thing was clear: it was madness, whatever Miss Cavendish was up to.
Yet she didn’t strike him as a woman whose sanity was in question.
She struck him as a woman who had something to hide.
He intended to find out what.
Chapter 5
“The atrium ceiling will be strung with seven hundred ribbons of bedstraw and meadows
weet, each sixty feet in length. Which means we need—” Poppy chewed her quill, calculating in her head. “Oh dear. Thirty bushels of foraged blossoms and five hundred skeins of white linen thread.”
“Hmm?” Constance asked absently, scribbling away in her journal with fingers specked in their customary splatters of ink. Poppy sighed. It was essential that they complete the inventory for the ball today, but Constance’s interest in the task was proving elusive.
“Sorry, darling,” she said. “Yes, of course. Oh—but what if we used gold thread?”
Poppy’s head ached. “The cost of five hundred skeins of gold thread would be—”
Constance waved the thought away. “Nothing to bother ourselves about. Gold it is. Unless you think—silver?”
“Right. Next on the list, the pergolas of roses in the ballroom will need to be built by Maxwell’s crew by next Tuesday in order to be wired and strung by—”
“Oh, Poppy.” Constance placed her forehead on her ink-spotted hands. “How might I convince you to resume this in the morning? My eyes water from the dullness.”
“We’re nearly finished,” she coaxed.
“What will you wear to the ball?” Constance asked, suddenly perking up. “My mantua-maker is arriving tomorrow to finish my gown. She is terrifying. You will adore her.”
Poppy had not for a single moment contemplated attending the ball.
“The ballroom is not my native climate, I’m afraid,” she said lightly.
“Oh, but you must attend! Once everyone sees your designs, they will want to meet you, and once they meet you, they will want nothing more than to purchase your plants. Desmond will write about you in his gazette—we’ve already come up with a nickname: the Beau Monde Botanist.”
“That’s very kind. But as soon as my work here is finished, I need to turn to an urgent matter at home.”
“Poppy Cavendish,” Constance growled, playful but by no means joking, “you will come to my ball. After all, there is no greater pleasure in life than dancing. Don’t you agree?”
Poppy tried to summon a breezy response, but with the full, radiant beam of Constance’s attention trained on her, her wit failed.
“I’m afraid I couldn’t say. Dancing is not part of the curriculum in the greenhouse.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” Constance said, drawing to her full height, “that you have never danced? But surely you had a season? Mrs. Todd told me you are a viscount’s granddaughter. Your mother was presented at court. You must have had a season!”
Poppy was growing tired of this line of inquiry. “I am a gardener. Maxwell is also a gardener. Did he have a season?”
Constance flicked her with her fan. “Maxwell looks dreadful in satin. Don’t be perverse.”
“Miss Cavendish, may I have a word in my study,” Westmead’s low voice called from across the room. He was walking briskly toward them, carrying a sheaf of papers. He looked positively fierce.
“Miss Cavendish and I are exceedingly busy with our inventory,” Constance said with mock seriousness. “Do come back later.”
“I need to speak to Miss Cavendish. Alone.” He stood and waited, the line of his back tense.
Constance glanced at Poppy with concern. “And he doesn’t even know about the gold thread yet,” she whispered. “You’d better speak to him.”
“Yes, of course, Your Grace,” she said, rising.
He led her down the corridor to his private wing. She had not yet seen this part of the house. It was dark, austerely furnished—clearly he had his limits when it came to his sister’s fondness for gilt—and smelled of sandalwood.
He held open the door to a study and pointed to a chair before an imposing mahogany desk. “Please, sit.”
His words were solicitous, but something seethed beneath his tone. He leaned his long body against the front of his desk, his arms crossed over his chest in a way that, with his height, was almost menacing.
“Miss Cavendish, I have just concluded an interview with your friend Mr. Raridan.”
He said the name distastefully, his finger tapping a brisk rhythm on the desk, angry and percussive. “It was a most unusual conversation. Perhaps you might help me make sense of it.”
She arranged her posture as straight as it would go, hoping not to reveal her unease. Westmead had been almost defiantly affable in their previous conversations. Arrogant, perhaps, but calm as a lake. Where had that man gone? And what could Tom have said to drive him there?
“Certainly, Your Grace. What is it you were discussing?”
The duke stared at her a second too long. “Mr. Raridan thought to warn me that you are removing the plants from your late uncle’s land illegally. And using my men to do it before it is discovered by his heir.”
Exhaustion pooled through her. Tom. Forever overstepping. Forever living in a world with a loose relationship to reality.
“Mr. Raridan asked for my assistance in blocking your scheme, for your protection,” the duke said. “He suggested that I should leave the matter with him, given he is your fiancé, and has a duty to protect your best interests. I believe the word he used to describe you was ‘confused.’”
His face was unreadable, and his fingers continued to tap, tap, tap on the desk. Her pulse quickened with the time he kept.
“I advised Mr. Raridan that your work here was contracted by my sister, not myself, and sent him on his way,” he went on, “but you can understand that this interview leaves me with a great many questions. For you see, Miss Cavendish, if there is one word I would not use to describe your manner, it is confused.”
“Your Grace,” she said evenly, trying to maintain a cool head. “Mr. Raridan is not my fiancé. And there is no scheme. You are mistaken on all counts.”
“Ah. I am mistaken,” he breathed. He closed his eyes and nodded, as though overcome with relief. “Of course.”
She hated him in that moment, for his japery of her. “I simply mean you would be wrong to believe Mr. Raridan.”
“I did not say I believed him, Miss Cavendish. But since I have spent the better part of an hour attempting to unravel truth from nonsense from a man brought here at your behest, perhaps you might indulge me in a clarification. Let’s start with what precisely you are undertaking at Bantham Park.”
“I am removing goods from my late uncle’s property in advance of his heir taking possession. That is correct. However, I do so legally.”
“Raridan claims the estate is entailed. Is this true?”
“My nursery is not included in the entailment. I have paid my uncle a tenant’s duty for use of his land, with funds from a small inheritance from my mother. We arranged the matter with a solicitor so that there would be no question. The goods I am moving belong to me.”
“Yet the fact remains you are removing them from the property covertly.”
He stared at her intently. She hated it, this assault on her integrity.
“The business is profitable. After many years, it has developed a steady stream of customers. Whereas my late uncle’s estate is not productive and requires independent fortune to maintain.”
His eyes softened slightly, but she could tell he was not fully convinced.
“Furthermore,” she went on, gaining momentum, “I have no relationship with the family that is to take possession of the estate. Should they challenge my right to the nursery, the legal fees alone would ruin me. Surely, Your Grace, as a man of business, you understand the fragility of an enterprise in the early stages of success.”
“As a man of business, I understand the impulse. As a rational person, I do not understand why you would betroth yourself to a man who believes you are a thief and then send him here to accuse you of the crime in person.”
She threw back her head in frustration. “Please do not insult me further by suggesting I am betrothed to him. He did offer for me. I declined. He is not aware of the particulars of my circumstances and clearly is mistaken in whatever he said.” She paused, and clasped her hands so
he would not see that they were shaking. “And might I add, Your Grace, that my personal circumstances are no more your affair than they are his.”
“I assure you I have no interest in your personal circumstances, Miss Cavendish. But I confess I do find it difficult to understand why you would put Raridan forward for an introduction, if you think so little of his character.”
She closed her eyes. The actual answer was too vulgar to disclose to a person who would never be able to understand the endless concessions one must make as a woman living in the world of men. How one must resign oneself to the ever-porous line between friend and foe, weigh expediency against principle.
Principle was a virtue dukes could afford. Gardeners had to be more judicious in their allocations.
“For all his failings, Mr. Raridan has done me a great kindness and I owed him a favor. I am certain that he did not intend to call my integrity into question.”
Westmead looked at her for a moment, then ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “If he would say these things to me, you realize there is no telling who else he might say them to.”
She had no answer to this. He was right, and the truth of it was chilling. She had considered Tom, for all his faults, to be her friend. And now, as her reward for this misjudgment, she had to mollify yet another male who, for an accident of birth, had the power to destroy her.
Westmead sighed. “Allow me to offer you some advice, Miss Cavendish, one tradesman to another. Commerce is not just contracts and terms. Success requires a keen eye for the character of the people with whom one associates. You would do well to take better care.”
Resentment flared in her stomach. The great duke, with his hard-won riches, offering lessons out of lofty condescension. She would like to see him sit in her seat, staring at the desperate columns in her ledger with the horizons of the world closing in, and see what choices he might stoop to making, what characters he might associate with, to stay afloat.
She rose from the chair and crossed her arms. “I did not come here for advice. I apologize for Mr. Raridan’s impertinence, but I would remind you that I would not have made the introduction had your sister not prevailed on me to disrupt my activities to come here. If you find my practices so irregular, I am happy to suspend them. I will inform Lady Constance that in light of receiving excellent advice, I have decided to take better care in choosing the people with whom I associate. Good day, Your Grace.”
The Duke I Tempted Page 4