He stared at her, no doubt mute with renewed affront at her audacity.
She whirled around and left the room.
Archer listened to Miss Cavendish’s footsteps recede down the hall. The sound of feminine voices—his sister’s dulcet tones beseeching forgiveness, the nurserywoman’s terse responses—became fainter.
Fuck.
He had offended her.
He needed to apologize.
He was not a man who lost his temper. Ever. But his blood had begun to rise the moment that pompous young man had sauntered into his study and implied he had enabled Miss Cavendish to fleece half the countryside.
Not because he had believed him. Because he hadn’t.
None of it had squared with her reputation. A brief query to his steward the day before had made it clear she was a person of considerable talent. She’d been ahead of the fashion for plants from the colonies that was becoming so popular among the gentlemen gardeners of Britain’s great estates. In a few years, if she continued on her trajectory, she would have an enviable business. Of course, locating it here, in Grove Vale, away from any viable waterways, was not ideal. But with the right land …
She was not unlike the men in whose enterprises he invested. Prescient, hardworking traders with potential greater than they had capital. If she presented him with an investment proposal, he would sign off without a second thought.
He had not called her into his study to insult her. He had called her in to warn her. But something about the idea of her with that swaggering, bog-witted specimen of manhood had made him lose his temper. At least she wasn’t actually marrying the oaf, with his blazing innuendos and squint-eyed understanding of lending covenants. To think of all her ambition and sharp intelligence laid waste to domestic indolence in some dingy apartment in Cheapside. The very notion of it made him depressed.
Constance interrupted his thoughts by throwing open the door. “What have you done, you miserable cod?” she hissed.
He looked up, stricken. “I—yes. Badly done of me.”
“Archer,” she said with deadly precision. “Four hundred of the most influential people in the country will be at this house in two weeks expecting to see a ballroom forest. God help you if there is no ballroom forest when they arrive.”
“I will make my apology known to Miss Cavendish—”
“Immediately,” his sister interrupted. “You will make it known immediately. Before she leaves. Go.”
For once, he was grateful to the footmen haunting the halls, who pointed him to the portico, where Miss Cavendish was waiting for a carriage. She stood stiffly, her posture so tightly drawn she looked like she might shatter.
“Miss Cavendish?”
She turned around and pinned him with her eyes. “What could you want with me now, Your Grace? Perhaps you think I am parting with the silver?”
“Miss Cavendish, I have insulted you. It was not my intention to do so. I don’t know how to offer you an apology that could be adequate. I hope you will reconsider.”
She kept her arms crossed over her chest, clearly unmoved. Anyone observing could be forgiven for wondering who, between them, was the duke.
“You see,” he went on, clearing his throat, “I found Mr. Raridan’s claims baffling given what Mr. Grouse has said to me about your affairs and reputation.”
“Ah. Of course. You’ve been prying into my affairs,” she said, not bothering to hide her anger. “And what did you learn? That I reside in Grove Vale? Subsist on a meager income? Grow plants?”
“I learned that you began gardening as a girl at the knee of your mother and continued to teach yourself the principles of botany after her death. You used a small inheritance to start a nursery and developed a knack for adapting exotic breeds to the English climate. You correctly anticipated the appetite of gardeners here for foreign plants. You are positioned well. Enviably well. And you have done it all yourself.”
He paused. “Do you want to know what I think?”
“I’m sure you will tell me.”
“That combination of ambition, vision, and industry is something I constantly look for in my investment concern. I pay men small fortunes to roam around the country seeking it out. And so I know better than anyone that it is …” He locked eyes with her in the dim light. “Exceptionally rare.”
He cleared his throat once more and went on gruffly. “Given I rebuked you for your lack of transparency, honor obliges I disclose to you that I became rather dismayed when I learned you were betrothed to Raridan. I suppose I thought, How dare she? How dare she squander such gifts on so middling a creature? Or, more to the point, on anyone?”
She didn’t speak. She couldn’t, because her breath was caught. She had never heard herself described in such terms by anyone. How could she, when the local gentry who had known her all her life told a different story about her? One of an eccentric spinster who coarsened herself with commercial enterprise. An arrogant, unlikable woman, unhealthily obsessed with plants.
“Thank you,” she said, hoping her voice did not convey how deeply what he said affected her. It would not do to seem overly moved.
He shrugged, as though his words were unremarkable. As though such assessments of her worth were lobbed at her all day.
The carriage she had been waiting for at long last appeared through the stable gates and rolled up to the bottom of the steps.
“Miss Cavendish, in light of my lapse of judgment, I fully understand if you do not wish to return to Westhaven. But if Constance believes me guilty of ruining her plans, I shall have to live with her mortal disapproval. I don’t suppose I could prevail on you to reconsider finishing the work for my sister? I assure you that I will not attempt to intercede in so much as the placement of a vase.”
The contours of his face should not have a say in her decision, and yet she could not help but admire them as the fading light danced across the planes that made him sometimes handsome, sometimes fierce.
Or perhaps it was only the way that he looked at her. As if her respect meant something to him. As if she did.
“Very well,” she said. “I shall return in the morning. For Lady Constance’s sake.”
He nodded. “I’m glad to hear it. For Lady Constance’s sake.”
And then he smiled.
Boyishly and quick and warm, like the sun darting out from a bank of clouds. It was so unexpected and disarming that without thinking, she craned her face toward his to get a better view of it. Their eyes met, and a chill ran down her spine. Because for just a moment, she thought he might lean in, close the distance, and kiss her.
No. Not thought he might. Wanted him to.
She wanted him to kiss her.
Instead, he folded his mouth back into its usual grim line, bent in a deep bow, and offered her his hand to help her into the carriage.
But it did not escape her notice that he held her fingers just a beat too long as he said: “Be well, Miss Cavendish.”
That he stood at the steps to his house and watched her carriage drive away until it went out the iron gates.
She hugged herself.
Not return to Westhaven? It was unthinkable.
She had spent far too many years of her life insisting she was worthy of the future she imagined to well-intentioned people who dismissed her as intractable at best. But she knew—knew—what she was capable of. She knew it the way she knew her own soul, her own breath, her own pulse. What she had not realized was that she had been pining for someone who knew it too.
She was going to prove that it was the Duke of Westmead, not the others, who was right about her.
She was going to leave them stunned by what she would accomplish.
Chapter 6
Indomitable, Poppy coached herself as she marched to the door of Westhaven, clad in boots and men’s breeches. You. Are. Indomitable.
She had lain awake for hours replaying Westmead’s speech about her in her head. At dawn she had come to a decision: she had chosen to simply belie
ve him.
She would no longer attempt to pass for a mannerly maiden with her awkward curtsies in her mended dresses. She would simply be Poplar Cavendish, named for a tree. A brilliant nurserywoman who wore breeches and rode astride and did not require society’s approval. She would use her inborn gifts to design the most remarkable ballroom in the history of Great Britain and leave this house with a legion of new customers and her independence finally secure.
“Lady Constance has requested the pleasure of your company in the morning room, Miss Cavendish,” the butler said, his face frozen in alarm at her appearance.
She smiled, ignoring his discomfiture. “Certainly. Lead the way.”
The room she was shown to was a jumble of disorder. The chairs and sofas had been pushed to the walls to make a large empty space in the middle of the chamber, and every surface was slung with colorful bolts of fabric and boxes of lace and feathers.
Constance stood on a round stool at the center of this chaos in a confection of shimmering pink taffeta, her arms held out to either side as a seamstress stood behind her, sticking the seams with pins.
A woman in a striking scarlet dress observed with regal bearing. “Tighter still around the waist, I think,” she said grimly to the needlewoman.
“Valeria, if she fastens it any tighter, I shall be capable of nothing beyond fainting. All of England’s oldest families will think I have a wasting illness.” Noticing Poppy, Constance smiled. “Ah, Miss Cavendish, you’ve arrived! I’d like you to meet Madame Valeria Parc, my mantua-maker.”
The tiny woman stood, revealing herself to be as striking as her gown, all angles and swirls of long black hair. Her green eyes flashed over Poppy, from her unkempt head to her men’s attire.
“Enchantée,” she said, looking quite the contrary.
“There’s a dressing gown for you behind the screen,” Constance called. “Do get changed. It’s time for your fitting.”
“My what?”
Hopping down from her perch, Constance linked her arm with Poppy’s and inched her toward a pair of Chinese screens. “I want you to have a new gown for the ball. Something that is as stunning as your designs. It is the least I can do after the profound misunderstanding last night. Now hurry up and disrobe! If Valeria is given any more time to straiten my stays, I will suffocate.”
Poppy opened her mouth to object—she was here to work, not accept gifts she had no use for. Indomitable, she reminded herself. The ball was an opportunity to win new customers. She couldn’t very well do that in her fraying dun-colored muslin.
“How kind of you,” she said firmly, and marched behind the screen to remove her clothing.
When she had changed into a shift, Valeria whisked her onto the stool and began measuring her with efficient little flicks of her wrist.
“She’ll need a proper set of stays,” she sniffed.
Poppy frowned. She favored the leather stays worn by working women, cut to allow movement. One could not tend plants if one could not bend at the waist.
Constance draped her with a selection of fabrics and trimmings. “I think the jade silk for her. It makes a wonder of her eyes.”
“Perhaps. With ivory petticoats and a gold sash.”
“The cut must be rather dramatic. Nothing maidenish,” Constance said.
The women pulled fabric across Poppy’s arms and chest and hips, pinning here and there, and then stepped back to inspect their handiwork.
Constance spoke first, allowing her lips to curve in a barely perceptible smile. “Well, well. Perhaps there’s a viscount’s granddaughter in you after all, Miss Cavendish.”
Valeria turned her around to view her image in the looking glass. Where moments ago had been a girl with the dimensions of a weed, now an altogether different kind of woman gazed back at her. A slender sylph with a wasp waist and a snowy expanse of upward-sloping bosom. Poppy immediately covered the exposed tops of her breasts with her hands.
“I couldn’t wear this. It’s indecent.”
Constance, Valeria, and the seamstress laughed.
“My dear, in that dress you will have every man in the room developing a sudden strong interest in botany,” Constance said.
She felt her cheeks turn bright red. Indomitable, she ordered. She squared her shoulders and smiled at her reflection. “Then I will do what I must in the service of horticulture. But now you must get me out of this. I am late to meet Mr. Maxwell.”
“Of course,” Constance said, unfurling her from yards of fine fabric. “But join me at five in the library. I’m afraid we must go over expenses with my tedious brother.”
When Constance insisted that Archer join her in the library to review the expenses for the ball with Miss Cavendish, he had sensed she was plotting some act of mischief; no one was more bored by expenses than Constance. He therefore arrived late and silently, his years as her older brother having taught him the benefits of stealth.
As he peeked through the half-open door, he saw that the account book was forlorn in the corner, its pages undisturbed. Beside it was Miss Cavendish, whose drooping posture and expression of dread indicated Constance had once again taken her hostage. He silently edged into the room. After yesterday he owed it to her to prevent further injury.
Constance rifled through sheet music at the pianoforte. “Ah, here we are, a minuet. Brilliant. Everything worth happening at a ball occurs during the first minuet.”
She played a few bars. “It’s a six-beat count, you see, not so difficult. Do you hear it? One two three four five six.”
The nurserywoman looked both beautiful—he could never stop himself from noticing how pretty she was—and amusingly sullen. “This is preposterous, Constance,” she muttered.
He was inclined to agree with her. She was, after all, dressed like a man.
“What is preposterous is yourself not knowing how it is done. What do you expect will happen if a handsome gentleman wants to dance with you?”
“I expect I shall politely decline.”
Archer laughed to himself.
“Nonsense,” Constance called, continuing to play the tune. “You will say ‘The honor would be all mine’ and be swept off your feet to fall in love under the stars. That, you see, is the sole purpose of dancing.”
Leaving the instrument, she took Poppy’s hand and pulled her to the center of the room. “The gentleman will bow, and you will curtsy. You will place your heels together, just so, do you see? And then he will place his hand in yours. And it begins.” She demonstrated, gliding across the room with an imaginary partner—first forward, then backward, calling out “one-two-threes” as she went.
Intent on her demonstration, Constance became more focused and creative in her steps, allowing her ghostly partner to escort her across the room with ever-greater flourish.
Enjoying the dismayed expression that had overtaken Poppy’s face, he could not resist coming out of hiding to whisper in her ear. “Has my sister been seduced by a spirit?”
She gave him a pained smile. “A drunken one, by the looks of it.”
“Oh, Archer!” Constance said. “Excellent timing. Here, you lead and I will play the accompaniment.”
“Not a chance,” he said, backing from the room. “I don’t dance.”
“You do now,” Constance said, snatching him by the hand and pulling him back into the room. “I daresay it would serve you well to refresh yourself if you wish to charm the Miss Bastians of the world.”
Without waiting for a reply, she placed his left hand in Poppy’s right one.
Given he had spent the bulk of the past waking hours reciting to himself the varied and excellent reasons for staying as far away from Miss Cavendish as possible, the only rational response was to let go of her fingers, make his apologies, and dash away to the sanctuary of his rooms.
And yet, now that he had Poppy’s fingers in his own, he could not find the strength of will to make himself release them. It was the same queer feeling that had overtaken him when he’d bidden he
r farewell the night before.
Having adjusted their arms to her satisfaction, his sister scurried back to the pianoforte and began to play. He mouthed an apology at Poppy and then, at her reluctant nod, began to guide her through the first mincing steps, hoping he remembered them himself.
The dainty prances of the minuet were nothing short of absurd for a man of his proportions, and his tall frame had never felt larger or less elegant as he went bounding through the steps and bows, arm held out aloft.
He noticed Poppy’s lip twitch at the sight of him. She darted her eyes away, kindly attempting not to laugh. He snickered. She choked back a snort. And then they both lost their composure entirely.
The music clanged to a stop. Constance glared at them over her shoulder. “There is nothing humorous about the minuet, children. Do collect yourselves.”
Poppy looked guiltily down at her feet, then glanced up at him with a devilish glint in her eye, biting that lower lip of hers in a way that made him want to remake the kinds of mistakes he had sworn off many years ago. He gave her a wink and took her hand as the music resumed.
The awkwardness fell away and he became absorbed in the feel of her hand meeting his, in the sight of her small, inward smile as she became more confident in the steps. All at once it was a pleasure to dance with Poppy Cavendish, Constance’s jangled style of musicianship notwithstanding.
They both looked up in surprise when the music came to an end.
“Well done,” Constance sang out. “Shall we try a gigue next?”
“I should return home,” Poppy said. “It’s growing late.”
He was shocked to feel a momentary twinge of disappointment. Certainly it was the first time in his life he had ever regretted missing the opportunity to dance a gigue.
The Duke I Tempted Page 5