The Duke's Disaster
Page 35
“Liveliness is a fine quality in a young lady,” Tremaine said, because he was a guest in this house and sociability was called for if he was to relieve Bellefonte of substantial assets.
“Fat lot you know,” Bellefonte retorted, taking a position with his back to the fire. “If every man in the House of Lords had rounded up his lively sisters and sent them to France, the Corsican would have been on bended knee, seeking asylum of old George in a week flat. How was your journey?”
Bellefonte had the blond hair and blue eyes of many an English aristocrat. The corners of those eyes crinkled agreeably, and he’d followed up Tremaine’s bow with a hearty handshake.
Bellefonte would never be a friend, but he was friendly.
“My journey was uneventful, if cold,” Tremaine said. “I apologize for making good time down from Town.”
“I apologize for complaining. I am blessed in my family, truly, but Lady Nita, my oldest sister, is particularly strong willed.”
Bellefonte’s hearty bonhomie faded to a soft smile as feminine laughter rang out in the corridor.
“You were saying?” Tremaine prompted. When would his lordship offer a guest a damned drink?
“Nothing of any moment, St. Michael. My countess and my sister Della have taken note of your arrival. Shall we to the library, where the best libation and coziest hearth await? Beckman gave me to understand you’re not the tea and crumpets sort.”
When and why had his lordship’s brother conveyed that sentiment? Another thought intruded on Tremaine’s irritation: Bellefonte knew his womenfolk by their laughter. How odd was that?
“I’m the whiskey sort,” Tremaine said. “Winter ale wouldn’t go amiss either.”
“Whiskey, then. Hanford!”
A little old fellow in formal livery stepped into the library. “My lord?”
Bellefonte directed the butler to send ’round some decent sandwiches to the library and to fetch the countess to her husband’s side when the fiend in the nursery had turned loose of her.
His lordship set a smart pace down carpeted hallways, past bouquets of white hothouse roses, and across gleaming parquet floors, to a high-ceilinged, oak-paneled treasury of books.
The library was blessed with tall windows at regular intervals, and the red velvet draperies were caught back, despite the cold. Winter sunshine bounced cheerily off mirrors, brass, and silver, and here too, the hearth was blazing extravagantly.
The entire impression—genial Lord Bellefonte; his dear, plaguey sisters; roaring fires even in empty rooms; the casual wealth lined up on the library’s endless sunny shelves—left Tremaine feeling out of place.
Tremaine had been in countless aristocratic family seats and more than a few castles and palaces. The out-of-place feeling he experienced at Belle Maison was the fault of the sisters, whom Bellefonte clearly loved and worried over.
Commerce, Tremaine comprehended and even gloried in.
Sisters had no part of commerce, but the lively variety could apparently transform an imposing family seat into a home.
“I know you only intended to stay for the weekend,” Bellefonte said, gesturing to a pair of chairs beneath a tall window, “but my countess declares that will not do. You are to visit for at least two weeks, so the neighbors may come by and inspect you.”
“A weekend might be all the time I can spare, my lord,” Tremaine said, seating himself in cushioned luxury. “The press of business waits for no man, and wasted time is often wasted money.”
“Protest is futile, no matter how sensible your arguments,” Bellefonte countered, folding his length into the second chair. “You are an eligible bachelor and therefore, a doomed man.”
The earl crossed long legs at the ankle, a fellow to whom doom was a merry concept.
“Her ladyship will ply you with delicacies at every meal,” he went on. “Kirsten will interrogate you about your business ventures, Susannah will discuss that Scottish poet fellow with you, and Della will catch you up on all the Town gossip. The Haddonfield womenfolk are like faeries. A man falls into their clutches and time ceases to have meaning.”
Avoid faeries as if your life depends on it. Tremaine’s Scottish grandfather had smacked that lesson into his hard little head before he’d been breeched.
“What about your sister Lady Nita?” Tremaine asked. The sister putting the worry and exasperation in her brother’s eyes and inspiring the earl to raise his voice.
Tremaine would never approach an objective without reconnoitering first. Knowing who got on with whom often made the difference between closing a deal or watching the profits waltz into some other fellow’s pocket.
“Oh, her.” Bellefonte’s gaze went to the window, which looked out over terraced gardens in all their winter solemnity.
A tall blond woman marched off toward the stables along a walk of crushed white shells. She wore a riding habit of dark blue—no clever hat or pheasant feather cocked over her ear—and her briskly swishing hems were muddy.
Bellefonte’s gaze followed the woman, his expression forlorn. “Lady Nita is very dear to me. She will be the death of us all.”
* * *
The baby was small and vigorously alive, two points in her favor—possibly the only two.
“Your mother is resting,” Nita said to the infant’s oldest sibling, “and this is your new sister. Does she have a name?”
Eleven-year-old Mary took the bundle from Nita’s arms. “Ma said a girl would be Annie Elizabeth. She wanted a boy though. Boys can do more work.”
“Boys also eat more, make more noise, and run off to become soldiers or worse,” Nita said. Boys became young wastrels who disported with the local soiled dove, heedless of the innocent life resulting from their pleasures, heedless that the soiled dove was a baronet’s granddaughter and a squire’s daughter. “Have you had anything to eat today, Mary?”
“Bread.”
Thin and freckled and wearing a dress that likely hadn’t been washed in weeks, Mary looked younger than her eleven years—also much, much older.
“Your mother will need more than bread to recover from this birth,” Nita said. “I’ve brought butter, sausage, jam, sugar, boiled eggs, and tea in the sack on the table.”
Nita would have milk sent over too. She’d been distracted by her altercation with Nicholas, and in her haste to reach Addy Chalmers’s side, she’d neglected the most obvious need.
Mary pressed a kiss to Annie’s brow. “She’s ever so dear.”
Would that the child’s mother viewed the baby similarly.
Nita went down to her haunches, the better to impress on young Mary what must be said.
“When Annie fusses, you bring her to your mother to nurse. When Annie’s had her fill, you burp her and take her back to her blankets. She’ll sleep a lot at first, but she needs to sleep where it’s quiet, warm, and safe.”
Though the little cottage wouldn’t be warm again until summer.
Mary cradled the newborn closer. “I’ll watch out for her, Lady Nita. Ma won’t have any custom for weeks, and that means no gin. Wee Annie will grow up strong.”
Mary was an astute child, of necessity.
Nita rose, feeling the cold and the lateness of the hour in every joint and muscle.
“I’ll send the vicar’s wife around next week, and she’ll have more food for you and your brothers, and maybe even some coal.” The vicar’s maid of all work would, in any case. “You store the food where nobody can steal it, and here.” Nita withdrew five shillings from a pocket. “Don’t tell anybody you have this. Not your mother, not your brothers, not even wee Annie. This is for bread and butter, not for gin.”
“Thank you, Lady Nita.”
“I’ll come back next week to check on your mother,” Nita said, shrugging into one of George’s cast-off coats. “If she runs a fever or if the baby is doing poorly, come for me or send one of your brothers.”
Mary bobbed an awkward curtsy, the baby in her arms. “Yes, Lady Nita.”
&nb
sp; Then Nita had nothing more to do, except climb onto Atlas’s broad back and let the horse find his way home through the frigid darkness.
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About the Author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Grace Burrowes’s bestsellers include The Heir, The Soldier, Lady Maggie’s Secret Scandal, Lady Sophie’s Christmas Wish, Lady Eve’s Indiscretion, The Captive, and The Laird. Her Regency romances and Scotland-set Victorian romances have received extensive praise, including starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. The Heir and The Bridegroom Wore Plaid were Publishers Weekly Best Books, Lady Sophie’s Christmas Wish and Once Upon a Tartan have both won RT Reviewers’ Choice Awards, Lady Louisa’s Christmas Knight and What a Lady Needs for Christmas were both Library Journal Best Books, and Darius: Lord of Pleasure was an iBooks Store Best Book. Grace is a practicing family law attorney and lives in rural Maryland. She loves to hear from readers and can be reached through her website at graceburrowes.com.