Miss Delacourt Has Her Day

by Heidi Ashworth

  Many thanks to the talented James Blevins for graciously allowing me to use the lovely poem he penned for his beloved Rebecca. Sir Anthony couldn’t have said it better.

  Special thanks to Dedee, Jami, Jen, Laura, and Shirley; my supersmart and supportive critique group. Thank you also to my husband and children, who gamely refrained from critiquing the state of our home while this book was being written. Thanks to Becky for being the first to suggest I write a Miss D sequel and to Mom for asking me to write another book. I dedicate this to all of you as well as those below who have been kind and generous with my writing. Look for some version of your name in this book: Becky, Bud, Carolyn, Debbie, Dedee, Hillary, James, Jami, Jana, Jen, Karen, Kimberly, Laura, Marilyn, Pam, Pat, Rebecca, Reed, Roxanne, Scott, and Shirley.

  Sir Anthony Crenshaw was the happiest of men. Less than a week previous he had been assured that the love of his life, the ingenuous Ginny Delacourt, would be forever fastened to his side. Their whirlwind courtship, which began with what was to be a day trip to the country at the behest of his grandmama, turned into a two-week pox quarantine replete with miscommunication, mishap, and mayhem at the country estate of Squire Barrington. Now that he and Ginny were betrothed, their courtship was finally at an end, and, for the first time in his life, his life could begin. He owned that being wed to Ginny promised to be wholly different from the staid and socially sterling existence he had heretofore known, but she would certainly make existing more interesting. In point of fact, he meant to make never being parted from her his life’s work.

  A trip to London would be necessary to shop for bride clothes and acquire a special license, but the remainder of the short weeks between their betrothal and the wedding would be spent at Dunsmere, his grandmama’s country estate, where he and Ginny planned to be joined as man and wife in the rose garden. At this very moment, all that was wanted was for his beloved to enter through the door of the salon, where he waited to take her into dinner, and then to walk among the roses, where they could enjoy another blissful evening out from under Grandmama’s sagacious gaze.

  Why, then, did he feel such a presentiment of doom when the butler entered and placed a thick letter, the address scratched out in a familiar chicken scrawl, into his outstretched hand? The vellum inside was sure to be replete with more of the same, and since the author rarely had anything to say that promised even a hint of good news, Sir Anthony was tempted to toss the whole of it, unopened, into the fire that burned merrily in the grate. The thought that the composer of this ominous epistle, though in and of himself a harbinger of doom, rarely committed his nay-saying to paper and ink stayed his hand. Reluctantly, he broke the wax indented with the seal of the seventh Duke of Marcross and took in the shockingly brief message.

  Reed dead! Sir Anthony thrust the letter with shaking hand into the fire as he should have in the first place. As tragic as it was for his cousin, a man in the prime of life, to have met his end so suddenly, it was tantamount to disaster for Sir Anthony. He would mourn Reed’s death, but he would mourn the demise of his own freedom that much more. Just a moment ago he had been himself, Sir Anthony, a man free of any constraint except for that of impending wedded bliss. Now, he walked from the room with feet like lead, as Crenshaw, the recalcitrant heir to death, duty, and the Duke of Marcross.

  Sir Anthony Crenshaw was once again impatient. He had been cooling his heels in the ghastly Egyptian-inspired antechamber of his uncle’s ducal domicile for the better part of an hour. Could it have been little more than a fortnight since he had waited, in like agitation, for his grandmama to grace him with her presence? It seemed as if his entire life had occurred since the momentous day he had been requested to escort one Miss Delacourt on a simple journey. At the same time, it seemed as if only a mere hour had passed-the one shared, stare for stare, with the statue across the way. It had the body of a man with a head of a crocodile, and if he had been caught in its briery maw, his current quandary couldn’t feel less thorny.

  If only his cousin, Reed, were here! He knew just how to handle his plaguey father. But Reed was dead and no longer able to stand buffer between Anthony’s carefree existence and the Duke of Marcross. Indeed, his uncle’s imminent death was all that remained between Anthony’s freedom and the onerous weight of a dukedom, a role to which Reed had been born and bred. Gad, the gods were cruel! If anyone doubted, they need spend only a moment gazing into the statue’s crocodile grin.

  “His Grace will see you now.”

  Startled by the footman’s silent entrance, Anthony jerked his head out of his hands. Apparently his hair had been twisted in his fingers, for his scalp now hurt like the devil. No matter; at least his silent communique with the golden statue was at an end. It seemed God did grant small favors. Sadly, Anthony was persuaded he was still going to need a large one.

  With a growing sense of foreboding, he rose to his feet and followed the footman into the master chamber, where his uncle could be found propped up in a massive bed adorned with red and black satin swags against bedposts fashioned into barley twists and topped with the heads of jackals. Anthony shuddered. The jackal represented the death-god Anubis, a fact that disturbed him never more than at this moment. A man’s bed, particularly that of a duke, should be about life and progeny and family, not death! It would never do for Ginny, his betrothed. He dreaded the day they would be expected to sleep in it. Not for the first time, he said a silent prayer that his uncle would make a miraculous recovery. Zeus! He would pray for his uncle’s immortality if he thought it even a remote possibility.

  The man was indeed sick. Anthony attempted to gauge his uncle’s mood based on the expression in his watery eyes but noted only that they had faded into nothingness against the dark circles underneath. Clearly, he was at death’s door, and Anthony feared that Ginny’s plans for a June wedding were all but in the basket. And so would Anthony’s entire day if the irascible duke was in one of his moods.

  “Your Grace, I am entirely at your service,” Anthony said, hoping he sounded kind rather than exasperated. After all, the man had just lost his son and was, himself, dying.

  “Ah! Crenshaw,” the duke crowed, “you took your sweet time in getting here!”

  Anthony closed his eyes against a particularly insistent wave of annoyance. Time was indeed sweet, and his uncle ate it like candy. Anthony’s candy. Yet, it was the “Crenshaw” that nettled him most. It was Reed’s title, but Reed’s father had dubbed Anthony “Crenshaw” before the dirt had dried on Reed’s casket.

  Opening his eyes, he pasted a smile to his face. “Your Grace, my apologies, but I am here now.”

  “Well, you ought to be! I waited on you so long, I fell asleep!”

  Surely, there was no civil reply to that piece of impertinence. Anthony bit his tongue and waited.

  The duke gazed narrowly up at his nephew. “Is that all you’ve got to say for yourself? Ah! Well, then” He sighed and chewed at his lower lip. “If you had been here in time, you would know that I’ve just had the doctor in. You might have heard for yourself. I’m dying!”

  “My deepest condolences. You have had quite a blow. We have all had.”

  “Young man, you haven’t the slightest idea!” the duke barked. “Losing my only son and heir was punishment enough, but for everything to go to a fop and a fribble such as you… Well! I can’t think what I have done to deserve such mortification!”

  Anthony, who felt sure he could think of any number of sins that would account for his uncle’s misery, reached up to adjust his cravat. True, Anthony had heretofore led a somewhat aimless existence, but there was nothing frivolous about paying one’s wardrobe the utmost respect.

  “Uncle, you have my word, no one is more prostrate w
ith despair over Reed’s death than I”

  “Is that so? Well, boy, you are about to get your lumps. That girl of yours… what is it, Guenevere? Geneva?”

  “Ginerva. That is to say, Miss Delacourt.”

  “Yes, that one!” the duke cried, stabbing a gnarled finger at his nephew. “She won’t do!”

  Anthony treated his uncle to a frosty glare, one he had never before dared use in his ducal presence. “I don’t believe I heard you aright. Miss Delacourt will do. Indeed, it is safe to say there is no other who could possibly do as well.”

  “She is far from duchess material. I’m surprised your grand mother should find her in the least suitable. Now, Reed’s widow, Roxanne, there’s a woman born and bred to be the wife of a duke!”

  “Uncle, you can’t mean for me to marry my cousin’s widow? Why, I’ve known Roxanne since she was an infant in swaddling clothes! It would be as if I had married my sister!” Anthony caught a carved Egyptian god staring at him from the corner of his eye and suppressed another shudder. “Besides which, my engagement is a fait accompli.” He only hoped Ginny would be more willing to take on the duties of a duchy than he.

  “It hasn’t been announced. You’ll do your duty and do it well. You are a Crenshaw!”

  Anthony knew a spark of alarm. “You are serious! But why? Miss Delacourt is perfect for me in every way!” He cast about for some virtue of Ginny’s his uncle would deem worthy but came up with virtue only. No doubt her propensity for speaking the truth aloud and her utter lack of regard for the pretentious manners of Society would instantly and totally sink her in his uncle’s esteem.

  “A penniless, no-name vicar’s daughter for the next Duke of Marcross?” his uncle demanded with a swipe at his pointy nose. “I won’t allow it!”

  Anthony was dumbfounded. He and Ginny had been engaged less than a week when he learned of his cousin’s death. In the days since, it had not occurred to Anthony that anyone might find his chosen bride to be one mite less than imminently unexceptionable. A mere baronet at the time of their courtship, he was not obliged to look terribly high for a wife, and in spite of Ginny’s connection to his grandmother, his uncle was correct with regard to her lack of standing in Society.

  Indeed, if he had not been forced into her company by virtue of a quarantine for the pox in the country home of Squire Barrington, Anthony would doubtless not have given Ginny a second glance. Once he had, however, he was smitten. Now that he had learned to love her, he knew he could never be without her. Staggering to the bedside chair, he fell into it.

  “So, you are saying we can’t be married?”

  “So, you are saying we can’t be married?”

  “No, Ginny,” her Grandaunt Regina, the Dowager Duchess of Marcross, insisted. “You will be married. I will see to that. …Only not yet.”

  Ginny began to pace the confines of her grandaunt’s favored room, the study where she had exchanged barbs with Sir Anthony less than three weeks ago. One momentous trip into the country and suddenly they were back at Wembley House to order her wedding gown made up by the best modiste in London. Now this!

  “It’s Anthony’s mother, Lady Crenshaw, isn’t it? I am more than perfectly aware she does not like me. Last night after supper she begged me not to give her son’s new status as Lord Crenshaw, heir to a duchy, a moment’s thought. `Why,’ she said, `everyone knows that heirs to dukedoms marry nobody vicar’s daughters every day of the week!’ “Ginny felt hot tears sting her eyes. “She all but said I am not fit for her son, the next Duke of Marcross”

  “Do let me handle Deborah,” Grandaunt snapped. “She is too much for the likes of you. And sit! Your pacing about has my brain feeling scrambled like two eggs in a pan!”

  As it was pointless to cross Grandaunt regardless of one’s personal convictions, Ginny obeyed. “It’s only that I was hoping to find in her a mother after so long without my own. She makes it more than clear I am not what she wants for her son. Doubtless I am far and wide of the mark of what she desires in a daughter, as well.”

  “This is not a fate reserved only for connections through marriage, Ginerva. Anthony’s dearly departed father was all I could wish in a son, but James, his needle-nosed, hardheaded, black-hearted brother, was born first! And may God rest his soul,” Grandaunt muttered, “should he ever have the good sense to die and be done with it.”

  Ginny tried not to stare at her grandaunt’s own needled proboscis, but, alas, it was all she could see. Clearly, apples did not fall far from the tree. Not for the first time, Ginny sighed a prayer of gratitude she had inherited her mother’s chestnut curls, large gray-green eyes, and pleasantly snub nose. As ugly thoughts had a way of spilling out via the tongue, she placed hers firmly between her teeth, determined to dwell on how kind Grandaunt Regina had been to her, even if only mostly, since the death of Ginny’s sharp-nosed father three years prior.

  Grandaunt drew a deep sigh. “It is not Reed’s widow, Roxanne, who worries me; it is my son, the duke! Heaven knows he adores Roxanne as his own daughter. Now that Reed is gone and all Roxanne’s hopes with him, I fear no one will ever be good enough to be mistress of Haven Hall.”

  Ginny sprang to her feet. “Grandaunt! Say it is not so! You have said over and over there is nothing with which to be concerned” She resumed her pacing. “That we would be married in the rose garden at Dunsmere come June-that all the preparations, save my gown, were already under way!” Ginny was aware she was beginning to babble, but ‘twas better than outright weeping. Grandaunt could not abide weeping, so babble Ginny must. “I am fully aware of Lady Crenshaw’s objections, but if you can’t handle her, Anthony will!” At least she hoped so. The Anthony of three weeks ago would no doubt bow to his mother’s wishes, but the Anthony of today-her Anthony-would never forsake her.

  “Ginerva, that is beyond the pale. Of course I can handle Deborah! I wish Anthony’s father had never married her, but I have no one but myself to blame for that unfortunate miscalculation,” Grandaunt said with a sad little shake of her head. “But that is neither here nor there. She knows better than any one who butters her bread. She will trouble you no furtheryou can count on that!”

  Turning to the window, Ginny shut out everything but the wished-for sound of Anthony’s carriage wheels striking the cobbled street below and thought on Grandaunt Regina’s words. Ginny knew Regina Crenshaw, the wife and mother of a duke, to be most formidable, but could she make a woman love her daughter-in-law if she had not the inclination? Somehow Ginny rather doubted even Grandaunt could manage that. Suddenly her stomach clenched, and she turned to the dowager duchess in dismay.

  “What did you say?” she demanded, then recovered her manners just in time. “That is, I beg your pardon, Grandaunt, I was not properly attending.”

  Her grandaunt frowned. “Come away from there. I won’t have you seen gazing out the window like some lovelorn maiden. What I said was,” she continued, though she did not meet Ginny’s eyes, “is that there is one obstacle even I have not the power to overcome”

  Ginny felt her mouth go dry. “What? Tell me quickly, I do beg of you!” She must know before she lost her composure. Worse, before she lost her newly found tether on her still-unruly tongue.

  “You are young, Ginny. There is no hurry to wed. At least, I trust not. A wedding next spring will do as well as this. In fact, I daresay it will make smooth the path”

  Now Grandaunt was the one babbling.

  “I do not understand you,” Ginny said as calmly as she was able, though her heart pounded in her chest with trepidation. “What are you saying? Why should we wait?”

  Grandaunt rustled over to her desk and sat down. Taking her quill from its stand, she bent her head to her work and said, “It is my son, the duke. He does not approve the match. I would make him see how wrong he is, but he never listened to me as a child and, I daresay, never will.”

  Ginny thought perhaps she had gone blind, so quickly did the tears rush to her eyes at her sense of betrayal. “Grandaun
t, not you too?”

  Grandaunt slammed down her quill with such force, the parchment skipped and upset the bottle of ink, nearly spilling it all over the large gold-leafed desk. “Of course not! How can you ask? I wish you to marry Anthony as much as do you. More, if it were possible! However, there are the duke’s objections to overcome. And even should I accomplish that, he will insist on having his finger in every pie. Better to wait until he is dead.”

  But what of Lady Crenshaw? Ginny had a sinking feeling that Anthony’s mother would be as much an obstacle as his uncle, the duke. As she was a youngish woman who appeared to be in the best of health, there was little hope she would be carried off anytime soon. “Can we not be married secretly? We shall be out in the country. No one need ever know.”

  “Not in the garden, Ginny!”

  “Why not?” she retorted, tears of anger now spilling freely. “I can’t see how it is anybody’s business but our own!”

  “That kind of talk, my girl, will not help your case! The Crenshaws are a religious family. Neither the duke nor Deborah would forgive Anthony for marrying outside of church. His father married in church, his grandfather, his uncle the duke, and even I to his father. First, the banns must be properly read, guests invited, and preparations made for the wedding breakfast afterward. The Crenshaws do nothing by halves, and now that Anthony is to be the next duke, his wedding will be a grand affair-mark my words”

  “But, Grandaunt, it is so old-fashioned! Anthony doesn’t care for such things. I don’t care for such things!” Ginny insisted.

  “I can see I have sadly neglected portions of your education,” Grandaunt said in an ominous tone. “When you marry Anthony, you will become a Crenshaw in word and deed. You will be expected to do things in the manner they always have. It is simply the way it is done. My dear, I am sorry, but this is not a decision that is yours to make”

  As Ginny wandered from the room and to her own bedchamber where she might weep in peace, she felt as if all her happiness was slipping between her fingers. For the first time in her life she regretted her upbringing, contented as it was. It was an unworthy thought but no worse than her fervent wish that the duke would find it within himself to die of whatever ailed him. He was said to be on his deathbed, but so was Henry the Eighth before he married wife number five. And six. Even if the duke surprised them all and was carried off quickly and with uncharacteristic good grace, there were still Lady Crenshaw’s objections to overcome. Ginny knew Anthony’s mother to be an impediment to her happiness even if Grandaunt did not.