“And I do not believe that for a minute, Your Grace.” Ella laughed, thoroughly enjoying herself.
“She is not as tender as you think her, believe me,” he said and made a show of looking around the room for any sign that Lady Brightwell was bearing down upon them.
“Your Grace!” Ella scolded playfully.
“But enough of that, you have managed to evade me once again, have you not? Really, I think you are too clever for your own good.”
“How so?” Ella tried hard to look entirely innocent.
“You have diverted me from the question of what it was which weighed so heavily upon your mind just now.”
“Whatever it was, it cannot have been so important, for I seem to have forgotten all about it.” She laughed.
“You are teasing me, Miss Winfield.”
“I am sure that you are well able to look after yourself in that regard, Your Grace.”
“Perhaps.” He shrugged. “But I am bound to say that you have beaten me this time.”
Catching the attention of one of Lady Brightwell’s maids, the Duke very quickly secured them a tray of tea. He seemed keen to keep her there, to have their little conversation.
Ella was beginning to realise that there was perhaps a little more to their acquaintance than simply the kindness and caring of a man who had witnessed a young woman’s distress. It struck her that he was coming to enjoy their conversations and had even, if she could let her imagination run away with her for a moment, attended Lady Brightwell’s home that day with the idea of seeing her there.
The very thought of it made her feel suddenly excited, even romantic. It gave her something of a fluttering in her stomach, a little secret, a fancy that she could draw to mind at any moment when she returned to Dandridge Hall. It would certainly do much to keep her occupied and take her mind off her family circumstances if nothing else.
But was that the pathway to danger? Was she setting her heart on a road that would only lead to disappointment? After all, the man was a Duke. He might be amusing and personable, even a little informal, but he was still a man of duty. He was still the same man whose attention to duty had led him to allow his attorney to search for a wife for him. It was all so confusing.
“Ah, Constance has spied us, I see,” he said, and Ella looked up to see Lady Brightwell hurrying through her drawing room with an intent expression.
When she saw that her friend carried a letter in her hand, she realised immediately that it must be her own note. It startled her a little because, for some reason, Ella had imagined that the butler would hand the note to the Duke himself rather quietly.
“Hello, my dears,” Lady Brightwell said in her customary warm fashion. “You are a popular man indeed, Your Grace. I have a note for you.” It was clear that Lady Brightwell was full of curiosity.
“Really?” he said and sat up a little straighter in his seat. “Who from?”
“I have no idea,” she said and handed it to him. “A young woman handed it to my butler at the door.” Ella’s heart began to pound, and her mouth went horribly dry; surely the Duke would not read it out.
“But who was she?”
“Again, I have no idea,” Lady Brightwell said. “She merely stated that she had been asked to deliver a note to the Duke of Hillington, handed it to my butler, and then darted away.”
“I see.” And there was a flash of recognition in the Duke’s eyes.
Ella realised that he was undoubtedly thinking of the note he had been handed by the curiously dressed little man outside his club in the dead of night.
Ella busied herself with pouring tea and tried to divert her attention away from the Duke altogether as he quickly opened the note. But she could not take her eyes off him entirely and, as he read it, she saw him smile. It was a brief smile, but a very genuine one.
So, he had recognised the little clue that had identified the well-wisher as the stranger at his masquerade ball. And not only that, but he seemed to be somewhat pleased by it.
Had he really enjoyed that night, that briefest of conversations, as much as Ella had?
“Not bad news, is it? You look a little peculiar,” Lady Brightwell said in an obvious attempt to prize information from him.
“To be truthful, Constance, I cannot work out if it is good news or bad just yet. But it is certainly something that I will need to concentrate on, that is for certain,” the Duke said with a secret smile of his own as he neatly folded the note and tucked it away into the inside pocket of his tailcoat. “Are you going to join us for tea?”
As the three of them settled down to comfortable conversation, Ella was greatly relieved that her little plan had, thus far, gone without a hitch. All that remained now was for the Duke to act upon the information that she had so secretly provided him with.
Chapter 21
As the Duke made himself ready, with the help of his valet, for his evening at the home of the Earl of Mortcombe, he realised that he was in good spirits. But, as much as he thought Lady Caroline the only sensible prospect on the list of suitable young ladies that his attorney had drawn up, he knew that it was not on her account that he was in such good humour.
Once again, he had been plunged into thoughts of the masked woman, that wonderful stranger who had so surprised and delighted him at the masquerade ball. She was somehow in his midst again and seemingly watching him.
But how was that possible? How could that anonymous lady watch him without him knowing? Or perhaps that was exactly how she was managing it, which would certainly make her something of a master, or indeed mistress , of anonymity.
She had certainly not been playing at it when he had spoken to her at the ball. No wonder she was so at ease with herself.
And then, on top of all his musings and excitement at the prospect of seeing her again, there was the idea that she was trying to warn him against something. No doubt it was the masked woman who had sent that scruffy little man to her with a message, the first message she had sent.
Was there really some particular danger? Was somebody really trying to mislead him in some way? If that was the case, only one person sprang to mind, and that was the Earl of Dandridge. But how on earth was that ridiculous man in a position to steer Rufus at all? He was a Duke, after all. And he could hardly be deceiving him in any way about either of his daughters because their own behaviour and demeanour proclaimed most clearly exactly the sort of young ladies they truly were.
There was certainly no hiding it, at any rate. Although he knew his thought a little harsh, still it gave Rufus a moment of amusement, and he chuckled suddenly, much to the surprise of his valet who was painstakingly brushing lint from the back of his tailcoat.
“Forgive me, Jones,” Rufus said and chuckled again.
“Not at all, Your Grace,” Jones responded dutifully.
With his merriment over, Rufus returned to the matter at hand. If the Earl was the person who intended to deceive him, then he thought it hardly mattered. But if it was somebody else, somebody quite unknown, ought he to be concerned?
And another thought, a much more pleasing one, was warming at the edge of his mind. What if there was no deceiver at all? What if nobody at all sort to steer him in any direction? What if the masked lady simply sought to dissuade him from making a hasty marriage?
After all, on that wonderful night, he had all but opened his heart to her and told her of his lengthy search for a woman he could actually love, one whom he trusted loved him in return and for himself. What if she was trying to help him, to somehow stop him making a grave error?
Better still, what if she had her own reasons for doing so? Was it beyond the realms of possibility that he had provoked the same interest in her heart and mind as she had in his?
When his valet left him, Rufus went to his nightstand and removed the note once more from the drawer.
“Your Grace,
Forgive my continued interference in the matter of your matrimony, but I must seek to warn you once more. In your
attempt to make your engagement with Lord Mortcombe and his family, I would beg that you reconsider the route you take. You must not go in an expected pattern at all, but you must seem to change your mind at the last minute. You must not tell anybody, and do not explain yourself to your driver at all. Please believe that I have your best interests at heart.
With kindest regards,
A Well Wisher.”
The words were intriguing enough, but his eyes flew, as they had done at every reading, to the tiny drawing of the mask. It had to be her; it could be nobody else.
But how did his masked woman know anything of his engagement this week? How could she possibly have known that he was due to have dinner with Mortcombe and his daughter? Unless, of course, she was somehow acquainted with the Mortcombe household.
His head was beginning to ache with so many possibilities, and the idea that he could come to no conclusion at all was not a little frustrating.
He could not work out if his masked lady did not want him to go to Mortcombe at all or if she simply wanted him to get there safely. If only she had been just a little more explicit. And if only she had realised she had only to say the word, and he would relinquish any idea of marrying, any idea at all.
Rufus thought about his intended route through the county and realised that it was, after all, the most obvious choice. But if he changed his route entirely, he would never know why it was that the masked woman had deemed it necessary to do so.
If somebody else sought to end his plans, he would surely only discover it by making his way along the original route in the first place. And if the masked lady sought only to disarrange things, to make him think twice about his engagement that evening, again following his intended route was the only way to discover it. If he made the journey without hindrance, then he would know that the masked lady had invented the entire thing.
If he was honest with himself, Rufus realised that the answer to the second question was very much more important to him than the answer to the first.
But he would have to take it very cautiously. He would have to give as much of an eye to the road as his driver, just in case there was something wrong out there in the world. But at least he was prepared for it if such a circumstance existed. At least he would not be taken entirely by surprise, would he?
Rufus knew that his mind was made up. He would take his original route, but he would leave extraordinarily early. He would instruct his driver to drive very slowly, making use of every extra minute they had. That way he could watch from the carriage window and could focus every ounce of his attention on the task.
Deciding that he did not have a moment to spare, Rufus turned to leave his chamber. He paused at the last minute and returned to his nightstand, opening the little drawer once again.
This time he took out the golden mask that his mysterious lady had worn and awkwardly tucked it into his capacious inside pocket. Suddenly she was real again, no longer a phantom. And he could not help hoping that there was a chance, however slim, that their paths might cross again someday.
And he decided that until that day came, he would keep the only thing he had of her on his person as a talisman, a symbol of good luck that would draw her to him, however fanciful the notion.
His driver had been entirely surprised when Rufus had demanded that they leave almost an hour earlier than intended. He explained it away by saying that he was ready and at a loose end and, as such, would rather take a slow drive than a fast one.
The driver was as good as his word and took them at a very steady pace through the county. It was certainly the tail end of the day, and night was drawing in, although it had not come down entirely. Fortunately, it looked as if it was going to be a clear night, and Rufus had high hopes of a bright moon to light their way.
Ordinarily, the drive to the Mortcombe Estate would have taken no more than half an hour. As they drove, Rufus tried to remember the route in exact detail, trying to draw to mind any points at which an incident could occur. But not knowing what that incident might be, he could come to no conclusion.
Finally, all he could do was focus on the road ahead and the ground around them. It had been his original intention, and he knew that that was the only pastime that would serve him well. But surely even that was not foolproof.
Just as the moon began to show itself, Rufus realised that they were coming upon a heavily wooded area. He could see the black mass of trees in the distance and suddenly had a great sense of foreboding. It was impossible to see what was ahead of them, and he realised that it was the only place along the route that was so ill-favoured regarding view.
He was about to call up to his driver to slow down even further when something caught his eye in the black, indeterminate mass of trees ahead of them. It was a light, he was sure of it. He had seen it wink for just a moment before it had been extinguished.
Was somebody out there waiting in the woods, hiding in the trees? Somebody who had heard them approaching and had sought to conceal themselves fully by extinguishing whatever flame they had at their disposal?
Rufus’s mouth went dry, and he had a sense of impending doom. He tapped hurriedly on the ceiling of the carriage with his cane, and the driver pulled the horses to a stop.
“As quickly as you can, turn the carriage around and head back the way we came,” Rufus called up to the driver. “I have seen something in the distance that I do not like the look of,” he added by way of explanation.
The driver wasted no time in carrying out his master’s demands and, in just a matter of moments, they were on the road again, and the driver quickened their pace. He was no longer heeding his master’s instructions to take the slowest possible drive and instead, quite intuitively, had sensed the warning in the Duke’s voice.
As they sped along the road, Rufus turned to look out of the back of the carriage. Once again, he saw the flickering of a light and was as certain as he could be that there was somebody there who had, after all, been waiting for him, somebody who had lit their torch again as the carriage had turned. But who was it, and what had been their intention?
As much as he wanted to know, he knew that he could not risk the safety of either himself or his driver. He felt sure that anybody waiting in such secrecy in the dark could not have good intentions.
And he could not imagine for a moment that his masked woman would be waiting there for him in the darkness. It was the most unlikely of all explanations, and he dismissed it without a second thought.
No, whatever she sought to warn him against was far more serious than he could have imagined. But why was it that she could not simply tell him? Why could she not seek him out and speak to him in person? Or even write him a much more fulsome and explicit note than the one she had given? Was it possible that she was in danger also and could not risk saying too much?
As he called up to his driver to take an alternative route to the Mortcombe Estate, he wondered if he would ever truly make the acquaintance of that mysterious woman.
Chapter 22
The following day, Rufus set out as intended to make his afternoon tea engagement at Dandridge Hall. Ordinarily, he would have refused such an invitation and made a very plausible excuse, especially when he had so recently been at Dandridge for dinner.
But when the Earl had made yet another pushy request, Rufus had agreed to it immediately. He had wanted to see Ella again, keen to know that all was well with her. And yet, as the carriage rumbled on through the weak sunshine of that late spring afternoon, he realised that he had not thought about her much since the letter from the masked woman had come into his possession.
It was as if he could not concentrate on anything. One minute he was full of curiosity for the woman’s identity and just how it was that she seemed to know so much about him. The next minute, his mind was full of the night before and the danger that he had very nearly found himself in. Who on earth had been waiting out there in the darkness? And to what ends? And how did it all tie in with his determination to fin
d himself a wife?
All that Rufus could hope for was that the curious circumstances at Dandridge Hall would somehow divert his runaway mind for a while. No doubt a few surreptitious glances between himself and Ella Winfield would set him to rights again.
He really did like Ella very much indeed; he more than liked her. He thought back to their most recent meetings and realised how comfortable they had become with one another. It was refreshing to spend time with the young lady who did not have designs on becoming the next Duchess of Hillington. If anything, Ella Winfield seemed to be the only young lady for many a mile who apparently had no interest whatsoever in his matrimonial prospects.
And despite her stepsisters being a very obvious target for her scorn and derision, she had never once seemed to play upon it. It was almost as if it did not matter to her if he chose to marry one of them, and he was not sure if he was pleased by her seeming disinterest, or disconcerted by it.
Kind Ella and the Charming Duke: A Historical Regency Romance Book Page 18