by Betina Krahn
“But there was something about a child. Was that in Canada? Did he have a child while he was in America?”
“Good question.” He began to look through the other letters and documents in the folio. She came around the table to look over his shoulder as he read aloud. Most of the letters were to Charlotte from her daughters and sons, but occasionally a letter from Charlotte to one of her children surfaced. At the very bottom of the folio was a small piece of paper written in masculine hand . . . the name of a church . . . with numbers and a date . . . attached to a name. Gemma Rose Howard.
“What could that be?” she asked, seeing nothing of value in it. But it had been included with family letters and preserved.
Ashton studied it, and then looked at her with an intensity that set her back a few inches.
“I believe it’s a parish registry citation.” He pointed a gloved finger at the line. “Temple Church . . . thirty-six is likely a volume number, ninety-one would indicate a page, and the date of entry is October third, 1747. There are two ‘Temple’ churches that I know of, one in London, and another, older one in Bristol. It would make more sense for it to reference Bristol, if it is tied to Fitz. The city is a major port for the Royal Navy, a place that Fitz would have spent time. And that ‘Temple’ is one of the oldest churches in England.”
“A registry for what?” she asked, sensing that this might prove more important than she realized.
“Marriages and deaths.” He paused, and then as he said the final word, she understood. “And births.”
“So someone named Gemma Rose Howard is registered there. Maybe that rascal Fitz married her there.”
He cracked a half smile. “If it were a marriage, I believe both parties would be listed in the citation. There is only one name, so I would be willing to bet it is a birth or a death.”
“Do you suppose they still have those records?”
“It’s a very old church, and such records are not always kept under the best of conditions. But it is possible they’re still available.”
“And how would I find out if they are?”
“You could write the dean of the parish or vicar to ask for answers. But even if they grant your request, which could take weeks or months, you can’t count on a thorough or verifiable search.” He studied her upturned face. “The only way to be certain you get the proper information is to go to Bristol and search the records yourself. And should you need reminding, you have a mere eleven days left to produce some proof of a noble connection.”
“Do you think . . . is it possible that we might find proof of a connection in this Gemma Rose Howard?”
“All of the other children of both Charlottes are accounted for in Burke’s or in the professor’s work. The errant admiral may be your best chance at a connection. But, who knows who Gemma Howard was or why she was included in this batch of documents?”
This close to him, her skin had begun to itch in alarming places and her gaze fixed on his mouth like a honeybee on a flower. She swallowed hard, trying to force her mind past this momentary distraction. He was sensual and wicked—an invitation to sin that she could not accept.
“Daisy, Daisy . . . you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into,” he said softly, running a knuckle down the side of her face.
“Why do you keep trying to talk me out of marrying your brother?” she said, trying for more irritation than she was able to muster.
“The title ‘duke’ is not just part of a man’s name or a pronouncement of his authority; it is a designation that defines his entire world. It’s land and estates and the people who work for and tend them. It’s a never-ending stream of obligations and duties to people both above and below your station. It’s a deluge of debts and taxes and legal requirements, contracts, and entailments. It’s a whole extended family—those long-since born and those yet to come—attached to and dependent on one man’s fortunes and decisions. Everything he has, everything he does, everything he is must serve his obligations, his heritage. And everyone in his life serves that blessed title as well.”
“Even his younger brother?” she asked, searching his face and finding there a raw bit of truth she hadn’t expected.
* * *
“Especially his younger brother,” Ashton answered, feeling those words resonating deep within him. “A younger son studies and trains and prepares for power . . . then spends his days marking time . . . waiting . . . hoping the time never comes that he must step into his brother’s shoes. That is the lot of the ‘spare’ to the title. Wanting it, but afraid of wanting it.” His eyes clouded. “I have spent my whole life serving my brother’s title as his second . . . a stand-in that has never been required, and one I pray is never needed.
“Arthur may be myopic, boring, and oblivious to most of humanity’s doings, but he has a good heart and a sound intellect, should he ever decide to use it for something besides bug classifications. He was trained to do his duty as the Duke of Meridian and will someday rise to that mantle. But it will take everything he has to fulfill a role he neither wants nor feels confident in.”
“What are you saying?” She stirred, on the edge of insight, searching. “You think you’d make a better duke than he would?”
The heaviness in Ashton’s chest slid deeper inside him. His lecture had brought up all-too-familiar feelings of being resigned to his fate and yet restless and miserable within it. He gave a rueful smile.
“I would never say that. I have no desire for my brother’s coronet.”
Was she standing closer? Were the blue eyes prying into his soul reaching for more than just—
“Then what do you desire, Ashton Graham?”
Chapter Eleven
Her voice was low and full of invitation.
For some reason he was reluctant to accept with his usual enthusiasm. Vulnerable and sexually curious, she was asking for his attentions in the most elemental way. She was also out of her country, out of her culture, and totally out of her depth. There were so many ways this could go wrong for her, and he was bound by his family’s orders to seek out every bloody one of them.
For the first time since he’d accepted his elders’ ignoble charge, he acknowledged true distaste for this mission. A moment of panic ensued, but he wrestled it back into the depths of his stained soul and squared his shoulders.
“I desire a good cigar, a stout Scotch whiskey, and a good book.”
She drew back as if she’d been smacked, reddened, then marched over to her uncle to riffle through his breast pocket for one of his treasured cigars. Thrusting it into Ash’s hand with enough force that it broke in half, she glared and then reached for Huxley’s book.
“Well, you have two out of three right here,” she said, using the hefty tome to smack him hard enough in the midsection to cause him an involuntary grunt. He scrambled to catch the book before it tumbled out of hand and watched with a mixture of relief and regret as she shook the countess and her uncle awake and bundled them out of the hall.
He stood for a long moment holding the book against him, staring at the doorway, and listening to her angry departure. Taking a deep breath, he felt himself settling back into his insulating worldliness and began to tidy up the documents, placing velum carefully between the pages of the letters as he returned them to the folios.
It was a good quarter of an hour later that he stood looking at the tidy pile of historical mystery he had just uncovered. Struck by a thought, he searched for that square of paper with the Temple Church citation and found it missing. He looked again. Then, a third time.
She had taken it. The minx.
He grinned.
He knew exactly where she was headed.
* * *
The next afternoon, in the midst of preparations for Bristol, Daisy and Red managed to take Dancer and Renegade for a good ride. She spent some time in the stable afterward, brushing Dancer and making certain he was well fed and treated to a carrot. At every sound of hooves on the brick alley or rattle of ha
rness chain, she turned, half dreading and half anticipating Ashton’s appearance. She refused to admit disappointment at his absence but, in her heart, she knew it was there.
She had spent a long, fruitless night going over the lineage she had copied from Uncle Red’s ramblings. It seemed there were indeed a couple of Howards several generations back, but her attention was repeatedly diverted by the way every name she read called up an annoying association with him. The way Ashton Graham corrected the names of her forbearers, the disdain in his aristocratic face, the physical hunger he either didn’t bother to hide or hid too well . . . every encounter between them had left a trace of longing in its wake. When she finally turned down the lamp and slid between the cool covers, she felt hot and restless and beset by memories she had spent five years trying to purge.
The sweet smell of new hay, the dark velvet of the Nevada night sky sprinkled with stars, the feel of a man’s hands on her bare skin, a tongue circling her nipples, a young, hard body between her naked—
“No,” she said aloud, and turned over to bury her face in the down pillow. “Absolutely not. Never again. Not until I’m a damned duchess.”
That night became one more sacrifice on the altar of family ambitions. As she lay there, tortured by what might have been and what would never be, she turned Ashton’s words over and over in her head. He had laid out in no uncertain terms the sacrifices she would be making in becoming the Duchess of Meridian. Her life would become an asset to the title. Every bit of her wardrobe, every friendship she made, and every social occasion she attended would be accounted as adding to or subtracting from some invisible tally of ducal prestige. If Ashton were to be believed, even her future children would be little more than property of the damned coat of arms. The closer she came to her goal, the more alarming those prospects seemed.
But as the night wore on, her spirits sounded the depths and started to rise. Yes, she would have to make sacrifices as the duchess of the house of Meridian, but she was no stranger to the grind and constraint of duty. Daily, she made sacrifices that were required by her family’s fortunes and future—for her beloved sisters and generations yet to come, who were depending on her. Did his fancy-pants lordship think being a younger son was harder than being an eldest daughter?
She rose from her bed, lighted a lamp, and wrote a letter to her mother asking for any information she might be able to find on the Howards that Red claimed as forbearers. On impulse, she added that if all went as planned, a certain duke would soon be making a happy announcement in the Times.
By the time Collette knocked discreetly on her door the next morning, her letter was ready for posting, and she had banished both her doubts and her troublesome desires. She was determined once again to complete her quest. She was going to prove her lineage, delight the Duke of Meridian, and wrangle him to the altar. See if she didn’t.
Packing and making travel arrangements consumed much of the next morning—that and posting both her letter and the endless stream of notes Lady Evelyn was penning to acquaintances in Bristol’s environs, announcing their visit. She explained to Daisy and Red that they needed to make advantageous friendships in places other than London, and since much of the Royal Navy was berthed at Bristol—not to mention commercial trading companies that used the port—it seemed prudent to call on the countess’s dear friends in that city. Until they had a firm invitation, they would have to postpone progress toward that destination. It dealt a blow to Daisy’s hopes of hot-footing it to Bristol on horseback and discovering the truth about the mysterious Gemma Howard.
* * *
“What is all of this?” Daisy stopped in the middle of her chamber at Holloway House to stare at the slew of garments laid out on the great four-poster bed. Collette stood nearby with her hands clasped, looking eager, while the countess rose from a chair at the tea table and smoothed her skirts.
“It is high time you got back. That beast of yours is better groomed than most men I know.”
“Shouldn’t all this be packed?” Daisy scowled and indicated her favorite pale sea-foam-blue dinner gown.
“We still haven’t heard from Lady Regina and so we’re attending a dinner party tonight,” the countess said, drawing herself up to face what she was certain would be opposition to her announcement. “At the home of my dear friends the Viscount Shively and his wife, Lady Esseme.”
“This evening?” Daisy thought of a rebuttal based on the countess’s emphatic rule: “Never accept an invitation on short notice.”
“Lady Esseme and I were girls together in Sussex. She only just learned we are in town—my own fault for not contacting her earlier. I had to plead urgent family business and beg forgiveness. But the invitation is in hand and while we wait for word from Bristol, this will be a perfect opportunity for you to cultivate acquaintances in this area. You never know when they may become important.” She must have sensed Daisy’s looming objection, for she stated flatly: “I have accepted for the three of us.”
Daisy’s mouth worked silently. The countess had already sealed the deal; there was no backing out now.
“Fine,” she said irritably, looking to Collette. “Draw me a bath, then.” She looked closer at the sea-foam-colored satin gown lying on the bed and shot a narrow glance at her satisfied sponsor. “And I see you’ve already decided what I’m to wear.”
* * *
Daisy straightened and peered at herself over her half-bare shoulder, inspecting the rear view of her best dinner gown in the pier glass. The blue-green satin shone in the lamplight, seeming almost iridescent when she moved. Thank Heaven the delicate drape and lace-crusted rear required no frame. The countess and old Chuck Worth were united in their disdain for the current craze that made women look bizarrely misshapen in the hindquarters. Only her most expensive dinner and ball gowns had rear drapery of any consequence. Most of her dresses lacked bustles altogether.
She had overheard enough of the countess’s and the couturier’s whispered consultations to realize they hoped the simplicity of the styles he created for her might make her seem more demure and girlish. That had amused her at first, but it seemed less entertaining now. It was probably a portent of the judgment and constant scrutiny yet to come.
Clothes. Mere clothes, she told herself. Not something she felt strongly about—as long as they didn’t require her to be laced too tightly. But when she turned to face herself in the mirror, she realized there was method in their madness. She did look younger and “fresher” and better still, eligible.
Uncle Red was less than thrilled to be stuffed into his white-tie dinner clothes and trundled out to meet a bunch of stiff-necked, long-nosed nobs. A word he’d picked up in the local alehouse: “nobs.” Short for “nobles.” When he voiced that sentiment, the countess pounced on him like a duck on a junebug. He was not to utter that word tonight or ever again. These were people of a rank and class that could aid his niece’s progress toward a most advantageous marriage.
Then, as they rocked along toward the viscount’s comfortable home, the countess’s conscience got the better of her and she turned to the sulking Red with a bit of salve for his pride.
“Just think,” she said, proving how closely she had read his nature, “this will be a new audience for your Nevada stories.”
He froze for a moment, studying her before breaking into a sly smile.
“I knew it.” He sat up straight with a wicked laugh. “You listen to my stories.”
The countess gave him a haughty look. “I could hardly escape hearing them. You tell the same ones everywhere you go.”
“And you like ’em, don’t you, Evie girl?”
The countess clamped her teeth, looking like someone was trying to pull them out by the roots. “They do, I suppose, have a gritty, simpleminded sort of charm.”
Red laughed, smacked his knee with his hand, and sat back, wholly untouched by the barbs in her compliment.
“You like me, Evie. You know you do.” And for the rest of the ride, Red hummed
a bawdy saloon ditty Daisy prayed he’d forgotten the words to, and he watched the countess’s irritation with undisguised pleasure.
Chapter Twelve
The viscount’s home was a stately stone manse set in a park of venerable oaks and elms. Liveried footmen met Daisy, the countess, and Red at the door and showed them into a large salon decorated in gold silk damask, thick Persian carpets, and down-stuffed Louis Quatorze furnishings. Daisy’s heart quickened as a dozen faces turned to greet her. After the last two days, she could only think that each of them was assessing her and cataloging her value by some inscrutable noble standard.
Lady Esseme turned out to be a short, round woman with a pretty face and a contagious laugh. Her husband, the viscount, was moderately tall, dignified, and not without a streak of dry humor in his conversation. When he learned Red had spent most of his life in America’s untamed west, he informed his wife that Red must be seated beside him at dinner so he could ask a thousand and one questions as they dined. Present also were a baron, another viscount, their lady wives, and a pair of dowagers who didn’t seem to like each other much. One had brought her nephew with her.
Daisy was busy trying to memorize a dozen names with a trick the countess had taught her, when she found herself being drawn forcefully by their hostess to meet a younger man “of some renown.” She looked up and found herself caught in the pale gray gaze of Reynard Boulton, who was being introduced as a something-or-other to the Viscount Tannehill. Tannehill was the other viscount present—the exceptionally thin man whose name she had just committed to memory by comparing him to a stork.
“Miss Bumgarten.” He broke into a brilliant smile and reached for her hand almost before she offered it. “How lovely to see you again.”
“And you, sir,” she answered, her mouth suddenly dry as dirt.
“You have met?” Lady Esseme asked, glancing at the countess, who seemed taken aback.