by Amelia Grey
“Where is Her Grace now?” Race asked Mrs. Frost.
“In her carriage. I didn’t speak to her. The duchess sent her companion to the door to say she would appreciate a few minutes of your time, if you would be so kind.” Mrs. Frost’s eyes widened. “I told her you had a party going on. The companion apologized for the interruption and said Her Grace was content to wait in her coach until you are available to speak to her.”
“That’s odd,” Race mumbled more to himself than his housekeeper.
“It was a quick win for me after you left,” Morgan said, walking up to Race. “Those two ladies don’t know much about card games. I gave them both a cup of punch and told them I would check in with you to see if you wanted us to wait for you or find another partner. What’s going on?”
Race stepped away from Mrs. Frost and, in a low voice, said, “I don’t really know. The Dowager Duchess of Blooming is here to see me.”
His cousin’s blue eyes narrowed. “Good Lord, who is she?”
“The devil if I know.” Race brushed his light brown hair away from his forehead and studied over her name, drawing a blank. “There are at least a dozen dukes, if not more. I’m not acquainted with all of them. And I certainly don’t know how many dowagers there are.”
“The area of Blooming is up near the Northern Coast,” Morgan offered. “That must be the reason we’re not familiar with the name.”
“It would seem so, but I haven’t a clue why the dowager would be here to see me.”
“Maybe she was a friend of our grandmother’s and wants to converse with you about her.”
“Damnation, Morgan, I can’t do that now with a house full of lively guests to entertain. She’s come without an appointment and says she’s willing to wait until I’m available to see her.”
Morgan grinned. “And I can see you are on the verge of telling her just where she can wait.”
Race smiled mischievously. “Tempted? Yes.”
“But you won’t. Our grandmother would roll over in her grave that you would even think of treating an older, titled or not, lady any way other than if she were a queen.”
“Don’t remind me,” he grumbled, all good humor vanishing from his face. “Why wouldn’t Her Grace do the proper thing and leave, and then later make an appointment to see me?”
“It tells me she wants to do more than just converse about our grandmother. Is there any chance she’s here because you seduced one of her maids, or worse, one of her granddaughters?”
Race glared at his cousin but stayed silent.
“Blast it, Race, whoever it is you’ve taken to your bed, I suggest you turn on that charm you are so famous for and make amends right now. It’s better to win her over upfront. She’ll go easier on you if you have to ask her forgiveness later.”
“Bloody hell, Morgan. I don’t even know who she is, so how can I know if I’ve seduced someone she’s related to?”
“Are you in any other kind of trouble that I don’t know about?”
“No,” Race stated, cocksure.
“Hmm,” Morgan said and then added, “It’s too bad Blake and Henrietta missed the party. With his being a duke, they would know exactly what is and what isn’t acceptable in a situation like this.”
“Why the devil isn’t our cousin here? What’s he doing today, anyway?” Race asked in an annoyed tone.
“He married Henrietta two weeks ago.” An amused twinkle danced in Morgan’s bright blue eyes. “You figure out what he’s doing on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”
Race uttered a curse under his breath. “Oh, right.”
“Where is Gibby? He’s been around long enough he should know what to do.”
“I don’t know what he’s up to. I received a short note from him earlier today, saying he couldn’t make it.”
“So what are you going to do about the duchess? She’s waiting to speak to you; you can’t just leave her in her carriage. That’s an outrage.”
As much as Race didn’t want to concede to Morgan or the dowager, his grandmother had raised him and his cousins to respect women. As inconvenient as it was now, he couldn’t change his nature. And he had to admit that the woman had piqued his interest. While he’d had his share of unannounced females appear at his door, none of them had been old or titled.
“You know I’ll do the proper thing,” Race finally admitted.
He called to Mrs. Frost, who had remained silently by the front door. “Go out to the carriage and inform Her Grace that I insist she come in and join the party. If she refuses, which I expect she will, have some of the servants move enough furniture out of the music room to make a comfortable place for her to sit down. See to it that she is served tea and some of Cook’s plum tarts, and tell her I’ll make time to see her.”
Race turned to Morgan and grinned. “Satisfied?”
“I am, but she’ll probably think you’ve treated her atrociously. You know how fretful dowagers get when they feel they haven’t been pampered and treated as if they were queens. She will probably tell everyone what a scoundrel you are.” Morgan chuckled lightly. “And if she does that, you will be the talk of the ton after this little escapade.”
“Most certainly,” Race agreed. “No doubt it will give the scandal sheets a week’s worth of articles if anyone finds out I’ve not rushed to do her bidding.”
“Or more, and the gossipmongers will love you for it. A titillating story makes them money. And look on the bright side of this.”
“Is there one?”
“Of course. This could encourage other ladies to arrive at your door unannounced.”
“I don’t see any harm in that as long as they are younger than a dowager.”
Morgan clapped Race on the back, and they laughed as they rejoined the party.
Several games of cards and at least two glasses of wine later, Race was enjoying another good hand of cards at a table with two delightful young ladies and their father, when Morgan tapped him on the shoulder.
Race looked up at his cousin and frowned.
Morgan leaned down and whispered, “Have you met with the mysterious duchess?”
“Not yet,” Race said, glancing down at the amazingly good hand he had been dealt. “I was giving her time to have a cup of tea.”
Morgan cleared his throat and whispered, “She’s been in the music room over an hour. I think her cup might be empty by now.”
That got Race’s attention. “Has it been that long?”
Morgan nodded. “She’s probably fuming by now.”
Race downed the remaining wine in his glass, and with a grimace, asked his cousin, “Do you mind taking over this hand for me? Some problems just won’t go away without a little push.”
Once again, Race excused himself from the game and headed for his music room. Upon entering, he saw a prim-looking gray-haired woman dressed in black, sitting in a side chair with mountains of furniture piled up behind her.
Race stopped in front of her, bowed, and then took her hand and kissed it. “Your Grace, you should have joined us. I take it you aren’t fond of cards, but I trust my servants have made every effort to keep you comfortable.”
“Please, my lord, I am Mrs. Princeton.” The tall woman rose and backed away from him while she curtsied. “May I present the Dowager Duchess of Blooming.”
The woman pointed to a much younger lady who stood by the window, staring at him with an amused expression on her lovely face. Race’s heart skipped a beat. The dowager was not an old, unattractive lady. She was a stunning beauty.
She walked toward him with a slow, confident stroll, stopping a respectable distance away. “You know, I’ve heard that about you,” she said.
His stomach did a slow roll. “What’s that?”
“That you can charm a leopard out of its spots and a nun out of her virtue.”
Race ra
ised one brow. “You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the gossip pages.”
“In your case, I think they may be right.”
From
An Earl to Enchant
My Dearest Grandson Lucas,
No one can put matters more succinctly than my dear friend Lord Chesterfield. Read what he says here and remember it well. “The wisest man sometimes acts weakly, and the weakest man sometimes acts wisely.”
Your loving Grandmother,
Lady Elder
Was she late or simply not coming?
Lucas Randolph Morgandale, the ninth Earl of Morgandale, sat in his book room with his booted feet propped on the Louis XIV writing desk. He sipped brandy from a glass that had been warmed by his hand and listened to the rain gently beat against the windowpane. The foul weather, the indulgent amount of drink he’d consumed, and the fact that the woman hadn’t arrived had him feeling restless, much to his irritation.
But it was more than the weather and the absent courtesan that had him in an ill humor. Morgan had watched both his cousins, Blake and Race, fall in love and marry during the London Season, and he had no intentions of falling prey to the same trap, despite their clever machinations over the past few weeks. In order to avoid any such confining pitfalls, he’d decided to quit the city early and spend the entire summer at his Valleydale estate in Dorset.
The first couple of weeks, it had been easy for him to fill his days with endless paperwork, hunting, and working with his thoroughbred horses. Later in the summer he had taken the time to ride over the vast lands of all his holdings, visiting with each of his tenants and thanking them for their hard work and dedication. In the evenings, he had enjoyed gaming at the local tavern or attending one of the many house parties that were scheduled at various estates around the area.
Still there was a void, an inexplicable feeling that something was missing in his life. Since a young lad, he had always enjoyed his stays at Valleydale, and he couldn’t put his finger on what made this time different.
Perhaps he had simply grown tired of the slower pace of country life. But every time he thought about going back to London, he remembered the knot of frustration over Blake’s and Race’s scheming in trying to show him how wonderful married life could be. He had told them on more than one occasion that he had no desire to be tied down by the bonds of matrimony.
Gambling, drinking, riding, and all the other things he’d done had not completely distracted him from the fact that his two best friends, cousins at that, had married. And while both of them had done the proper thing and invited him to dinner often, it hadn’t taken him long to realize that was half the problem. Every time he turned around, one of them was having him to dinner at their home with their wives and very conveniently happened to invite a string of uninspiring young ladies as well.
He was tired of being entangled in their schemes.
Morgan huffed under his breath and took another sip of the brandy, letting it settle on his tongue a few seconds before swallowing. They were mollycoddling him as if he couldn’t find feminine companionship for himself.
He had to get away. He had to get away from them. London Society was fueled by gossip, and all the scandalmongers were laying bets he’d be married by the end of summer. Morgan had scoffed at that ridiculous notion as utterly preposterous. But it hadn’t kept White’s from making it an official wager, much to his consternation.
Morgan would rather pay for his women so there would be no strings attached. But finding a suitable bedmate was obviously more easily planned than carried out so far from the City.
It wasn’t that there weren’t plenty of women around willing to share their beds or to give him a few minutes of pleasure, but Morgan had realized a few months ago, when he was at Valleydale with his cousins, that a quick romp with an upstairs wench at the local tavern no longer held any appeal for him. And unlike his cousins, Blake and Race, Morgan had never cared for the idea of setting up a paid mistress in Town to be at his beck and call. Mistresses demanded time and attention that he wasn’t willing to give.
So in desperation, he supposed, he had come up with a grand plan to hire a woman never destined to be a wife to come and spend a couple of days with him at his estate; a beautiful, willing woman he could sink his flesh into with no strings attached, only relief.
With the help of his solicitor, Buford Saint, Morgan had gone to great lengths to arrange for an exclusive and quite expensive lady of the evening to travel out via a private coach to see him. Saint had assured him she was highly sought after, and even Prinny himself had been known to enjoy her services from time to time.
Morgan had a letter from Saint saying she would arrive this afternoon, but afternoon had turned to evening, and evening had become late night, and there still was no sign of Miss Francine Goodbody. When she hadn’t made it by nine o’clock, and it was clear she wouldn’t be taking supper with him, Morgan had sent his two house servants to bed. Since then, he had been in his book room drinking too much, as was evidenced by the pounding in his temples and the roar in his ears.
He hated the feeling of not being quite in control of himself. That and the cursed headaches the next day were the reasons he’d fallen out of favor with drunkenness years ago. But tonight, for some damned reason, he had uncharacteristically given in to frustration and ended up feeling justified for overindulging in the fine brandy his cousin Blake had given him before he left London.
While continuing to grumble over his unfortunate plight, Morgan heard a noise. A sharp sense of warning shimmied up his back for a second, and he regained control of himself instantly. Did he hear the sound of a carriage coming up the tree-lined drive that led to his house? Had the much-anticipated Miss Francine Goodbody finally arrived? As quietly as possible, he lowered his feet to the floor and placed the brandy glass on the edge of the desk. He rose, walked to the opposite side of the room, parted the sheers that covered the window, and looked out into the darkness.
A dense fog had settled over the landscape, and rain fell in a steady stream. No one should be out in this downpour, but he was certain that he saw the lights from a coach coming up the lonely road that led to the front of his house.
She had made it at last.
Morgan threw a glance at the brass-encased clock on the mantel. Almost midnight.
“It was probably Lord Chesterfield who said ‘better late than never,’” Morgan mumbled softly. And for once, he agreed with the pompous earl. Though he doubted Chesterfield had said half the stuff his grandmother attributed to the man.
If Morgan met Miss Goodbody at the door, perhaps he could get her above stairs and settled into her room without waking the servants. It wasn’t that he felt as if he had to sneak around in his own house or censure his conduct around his staff, but he would just as soon not have to deal with his butler, Post, or the man’s wife until tomorrow morning.
Three days ago, when he received the letter from his solicitor saying that all had been arranged and Miss Goodbody would be arriving today, Morgan had given most of the staff a week off. At first he had had no feelings for the servants’ sensibilities concerning this matter, but later, he wisely decided it was best to take precautions and be discreet. Why let his entire household of servants know about his dalliance with the courtesan?
The fewer eyebrows he raised with his aberrant behavior of inviting a woman to entertain him in his home, the better. Most of the servants at Valleydale had been with his grandmother for many years and were reluctant to leave, feeling they would be neglecting their duties to him to take a full week off. Morgan finally had to insist they take the holiday.
Miss Goodbody would be gone by the time the staff returned, and hopefully, because Morgan had complete trust in Post and his wife, no one else would be the wiser about Morgan’s rendezvous with the delectable-sounding woman Saint had selected for him.
Morgan grabbed the low-burning
lamp from his desk and walked toward the front of the house. As he strode by the drawing room, he saw lights from the lanterns on the coach pass by the window. He picked up his pace, wanting to get to the door before Miss Goodbody hit the large brass knocker that was fashioned in the shape of a magnificent horse. The clang from that thing could wake the hounds of hell. He placed the lamp on a vestibule table, and then as quietly as possible, he threw the latch and opened the heavy door. It creaked, but he hoped not enough to wake the servants who slept on the second floor and off the main section of the house.
As he stepped onto the porch, the wet, chilling air filled his lungs and helped clear his head. In the distance, behind the coach and through the trees, he saw a break in the clouds. The moon shone down, giving an eerie cast to the whorls of fog that lingered and hovered close to the ground.
Through the rain, he watched the driver jump down and open the door to the coach. A lady covered head to toe in a black hooded cape stepped out. In the gray light from the lanterns attached to the outside of the coach, he saw another woman who looked to be wearing what he would consider a servant’s headpiece start to step down, too, but the lady on the ground turned and spoke to her.
Morgan couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it seemed to him that they were having a heated discussion. He assumed that the maid wanted to follow Miss Goodbody to the door, but she wasn’t having any of that. It struck him as odd that Miss Goodbody’s maid would take her to task over anything, especially considering the fact her employer was getting drenched from the cascading rain while she was doing it. After a few moments, the maid disappeared back inside the coach, and the driver shut the door.
It hadn’t dawned on Morgan that his courtesan would bring her maid, but it should have. He had intimate knowledge of how difficult it was to get a woman out of her clothing or back into it for that matter. That thought sent a wave of anticipation shooting through him. He could more than adequately handle that job for Miss Goodbody while she was at Valleydale. In fact, he was looking forward to it. There were times when unlacing stays could be quite titillating. He would find a place for the maid on the servants’ floor. Her services wouldn’t be needed tonight.