“Miss Amelia, has B-flat harmed you in such a manner that you hold a grudge and refuse to acknowledge it?” Mr. Stephens said, unaware of Estella. “Listen, it’s a chromatic scale.” His fingers glided easily over the keys. “You are going down a half note at a time. B, B-flat, A. Become dearest friends with B-flat, Miss Amelia. Overcome your differences. Now let’s try again.”
The previous evening she had thought him a reprehensible blackguard, possessing a scorching caustic tongue, and now she wondered at how patiently he helped her sisters. First impressions could be so terribly wrong, and the best parts of some people waited under the surface. He gave the twins a lead note, and they sang another beautiful line of harmony. Estella clapped her hands.
“That was lovely, my dears. And Mr. Stephens, you are a brilliant tutor. A true master.”
He swung quickly around. He said nothing, but studied her. His jaw worked. Dots of light glowed on the surface of his shiny dark eyes.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give you a start,” she said.
“Well, you did.” He patted the bench beside him. “For punishment, you must sing in Italian.”
“What? I don’t know any Italian songs. And you don’t enjoy my singing.”
“You are quite mistaken.” He held up a graceful finger. “I adore your voice. In fact, it reminds me of my favorite person from my boyhood, and you want to learn Italian. So we shall both be gratified if you sing.”
“You are very persuasive.” She sat down, and he slid closer.
“Now I’m going to sing the line, and then you repeat what I sing.”
The instructions were easy, but Estella couldn’t follow them. She was too distracted by his pine-and-cedar scent filling her nose and the hot quivers that rushed over her skin every time their shoulders rubbed together. And worse, all during this little electrical storm, Mr. Stephens was saying, “Round your lips when you make the O sound. Your lips are not round enough. Watch mine.” But studying his lips, which she had daydreamed of kissing all day, only rendered her incapable of making any sound at all.
When he had to reach for a G in the bass clef, his arm brushed against her breasts. She felt as though an explosion happened beneath her skin. And rather than edging away to a safe distance, as a proper lady should, she strained forward, hoping for another low note, her nipples erect.
What was wrong with her? Had she lost all propriety? Yesterday she had given herself permission to innocently enjoy the gentle heart-fluttering his music aroused, but now the feelings he had awakened were dangerous and rushing up like a spring from the fertile ground.
“Miss Primrose, it’s your turn to sing the line,” he said.
Oh dear, what was she supposed to sing? She remembered none of his words and melody, just his lips making the kissable O shape and the wild current running between where their bodies touched. He gazed at her, waiting. His dark eyes seemed to have the power to pierce her skin. Could he see inside her to that hot throb between her legs?
She bolted up. “I-I wish to play cards now!”
He blinked, surprised, and drew his hands off the keys. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry I thought you wanted to learn Italian. I didn’t mean to make you feel obliged.”
“You didn’t. I…” What did she say? I want to kiss you so desperately that I’m afraid of myself. “I enjoy cards very much.”
Cards were safe. They didn’t require touching or asking others to look at their lips. Her heart returned to its normal rhythm as she played. She laughed at Mr. Stephens’s comic and blatant attempts to cheat because Cecelia was beating them all so soundly. Again, she felt the sensation that she might look up and see her grandfather. They played until the candles had almost burned down and the twins were falling asleep over their hands. No one wanted to leave their warm circle for the cold emptiness of their bedchambers.
But alas, she needed to put an end to the night if she was to have enough energy to face the next day. Mr. Stephens escorted Amelia to the stairs with Cecelia and Estella following behind him. Then he let the twins continue up to their rooms, while he lingered below, holding a sputtering candle. The flame reflected in those shiny, penetrating eyes that could cut through skin and bone. A gentle smile played on his mouth.
She had an urge to wrap her arms around him and cry unabashedly like Lottie, I love you.
What? She couldn’t truly love him! That was ridiculous. No one of sense would fall in love in a matter of two days. She had been starved for laughter and happiness for so long she fancied herself in love.
She didn’t know what to do. Kiss him good night? Embrace him? The air in the small space between them was saturated with crackling tension. She felt as if he wanted to say something but refrained. At length she jabbed out her hand. “Thank you, Mr. Stephens, for a perfect day. Simply perfect.”
He raised her offered hand to his mouth and slowly kissed her, letting his lips linger. Estella could not contain her embarrassing gush of breath.
She needed to leave, or she would find herself in danger. Or, to be more accurate, he would be in danger of her roiling desire.
“Pardon me, I must check, er, something.” She backed up, turned, and missed the door, instead slamming into the wall. Ouch!
“Estella,” he whispered after her as she fled, but she dared not answer.
She dashed to the kitchens. She detested cleaning dishes, but at the moment, she desired nothing more than to vigorously scrub something, as though she could wash away her scary yearnings.
She could not fall in love with a man she couldn’t marry.
No man of sense would sink his livelihood and put himself in debtor’s prison for a lady. He wouldn’t take a wife who carried with her an enormous load of debt, two unmarried sisters, and an ailing mother. Estella was begging for a broken heart to add to her mountain of troubles.
To her dismay, she found all the pots and dishes were put away. Lottie played with a string coiled between her fingers by the warm oven. “Mr. Harris helped me clean,” she said.
That sly man! He wasn’t fatigued at all.
Now Estella had nothing to do but lie in bed and torture herself with fancies of her and Mr. Stephens fondling each other’s bared bodies as their gondola drifted beneath the lovely Venetian bridges and starlit night.
* * *
Lucere didn’t sleep. He prowled like a nocturnal cat around his bedchamber. His tender emotions for Estella were coming too quickly, over vaulting themselves. He and Estella would only hurt themselves if they continued this dangerous course. He needed to tell her the truth of his identity. The revelation would erect a cold wall between their unequal stations. It would destroy her unguarded, easy smiles and laughter, which made him feel as though he had woken up from years of sleeping.
He heard a quiet knock at the door. “Your Grace.”
“Yes, Harris.”
The man entered.
“I guess you heard me thinking,” Lucere said.
“Precisely.”
Lucere played silent chord progressions on the surface of his commode. “I’ve got to tell her tomorrow that I’m the duke. This deception cannot endure.”
Harris remained quiet, the pregnant silence laden with meaning.
Lucere flung up his arms in frustration. “Just say it, Harris. Be frank. Be forthright. Bloody well try.”
“Very well.” He sank his huge frame in the dainty chair by the writing desk. “Miss Primrose does not need the Duke of Lucere, but Mr. Stephens. She is afraid of the future. If you reveal that you are the duke, you will distance her with your consequence. Any free interchange will be silenced. But most importantly, she will lose her true friend. If you want to help Miss Primrose, remain her confidant for a while longer and have the Duke of Lucere help from a distance.”
“Some would say that what you are proposing is immoral.”
“That depends entirely upon the perspective, Your Grace.”
“Good God, talking to you feels like reading Gulliver’s Travels o
ver and over. It was trying enough the first time. So what is the perspective, the horse’s or the yahoo’s?”
“Are you the Duke of Lucere or Mr. Stephens? She should learn the real man beneath the superficiality of names and titles.”
Lucere paced a moment and then stopped at the window, peering out at the black country night dotted with hundreds of stars. “But therein lies the problem. Mr. Stephens is finding himself rapidly succumbing to her allurements, which seem without end. I’m in danger, Harris. True danger.”
“This may be a problem,” Harris said, rising. He strolled to the door and paused. “Or it may not.”
Lucere spun around. “I don’t even want to contemplate the meaning of those words. I cannot marry a woman who maintains a lodging house, nor can I take such an honorable, kind woman as Miss Primrose as a low mistress. I made a vow to my father—” He held up his palm before Harris could point out the obvious. “Yes, Miss Primrose is my cousin, but also the grandchild of the most notorious rake in family, maybe even British, history. No one in polite society will acknowledge her. My mother and sisters will have no scruple cutting her.”
“A brutal dilemma, indeed,” Harris replied calmly. “Let us hope then that the Duke of Mowne’s most unfortunate wound heals quickly, and we shall continue our sojourn to Scotland to meet your German princess, who had the great happenstance to be born to the proper parents. Perhaps you will develop such a violent passion for Her Highness that you will quickly forget your tender feelings for the worthy Miss Primrose—no doubt born of your dull entrapment in Lesser Puddlebury. Thus you are saved a decision that would otherwise characterize your courage and character.” Harris opened the door and then gave another dramatic pause. Really, the man should be on stage. “But I merely state what are probably your own thoughts.” With this final pronouncement, Harris made his grand exit into the wings.
Lucere stared at the now-closed door and muttered, “I need a new manservant.”
Chapter Nine
* * *
Lucere’s anxious mind turned the problem over and over through the night. When he finally succumbed to sleep in the early morning hours, he had no resolution. Nor did he possess one when he awoke three hours later.
The answer arrived as he was shaving by candlelight and nicked his jaw. He tried to contain the gushing blood on a handkerchief, but the stain spread. That was when he decided he would tell her. He was being selfish by refusing to accept the pain he would cause her.
He came downstairs with grim resolve. As he was placing the teapot and Harris’s scones—really, the man seemed to revel in the kitchens, especially how he carried on about French chefs—on the breakfast table, she stepped in. The morning light glowed around her pale hair like an angel’s halo. She smiled that loving, Catherine-like smile that shattered his heart into splinters and said, “Good morning, Mr. Stephens.”
Thus, he spent another day as Mr. Stephens.
Then another and another, because she was the most fascinating female he had ever encountered. He knew he should tell her the truth, but she was like a wild creature nervously approaching his outstretched hand for food. Any quick or false motion, and she would scurry away.
Her presence chased off his gloom. Near her, the world became more vivid in its details. The curve of her ear as she anchored that always escaping strand of pale hair behind it, the steam rising off her tea that flushed her nose and cheeks, the gentle upturn of her lips and soft glitter of her eyes when she conversed with others.
He tried to help her around the house in his own fumbling, inexperienced ways. He tutored her sisters, he helped Harris cook, he wandered to the market and picked lovely fruit for her. The Duke of Lucere wouldn’t enjoy such lowly things and stooped to perform them only if they held some promise of future mattress frolicking. But Mr. Stephens found himself enamored with the simplicity and honesty of this life.
For instance, he truly enjoyed teaching the twins about Homer, Galileo, and other things that Miss Amelia characterized as “unimportant.” He relished the moment he saw the light of understanding dawn in their eyes. He knew Estella kept them from the housework so they could be educated as ladies and make successful alliances. They really weren’t so insipid beneath the surface, and in a few years, they would calm to sensible beings. He just needed to point their high spirits in the proper course and guide their quick minds to worthy subjects. He wished he could be so close to his own sisters. They had followed their mother’s example and become graceful, dignified women who were more like beautiful statues than blood-filled humans.
Of course, his tutoring sessions were considerably helped along when Estella brought her sewing work and eavesdropped. She was thirsty to learn. Her mind was vibrant and sharp, but she was given very little space or time to think. Her life was consumed by taking care of a decrepit home, raising her sisters to be ladies, and caring for her ailing mother.
At breakfast, he always drew her into conversation about politics, often under the guise of disagreeing with her. She enjoyed talking and thinking about the greater world. Often she would ask him questions, and he would find himself shocked that he knew the answers. Perhaps he hadn’t wasted all his life, but managed to learn some useful knowledge along the way. But when he pushed her on the points that caused her anxiety, such as this Mr. Todd or her finances, she would disappear under a shell like a tiny, nervous crab.
When he asked the twins about Mr. Todd, they rolled their eyes and said that he was a banker and that their elder sister should hurry up and marry him. After all, there weren’t any real gentlemen in Puddlebury as in London. Never mind that this logic implied that Mr. Stephens wasn’t real. With unclouded, oblivious faces, they further claimed Estella had not accepted Todd because she wanted to wait until Amelia and Cecelia were ready to marry. “But we’re ready now,” Cecelia assured Lucere.
“Not for any real London gentlemen,” Lucere retorted.
Of course, their explanation of Estella’s reticence made no sense, but then, sense was not something the twins, or most sixteen-year-old girls for that matter, possessed in great quantity. Ladies who married men of financial or social advantage used their new station to advance their sisters’ prospects. He was beginning to realize the extent that Estella had protected her family from her concerns. And she wasn’t likely to let him inside her worries.
What were in those damn letters to the duke?
One morning he cornered her alone as she dusted the parlor and dining rooms. He picked up a rag from the kitchens—he had learned his way around her kitchens by now—and began to help her as best he could.
As he wiped away dust from a frame containing embroidered primroses, he related a story of being told to leave the Sistine Chapel for lying down on the floor to study the art. A true tale. “You’re outrageously punishing me for a simple crime of love and admiration!” he had told the guards in those odd uniforms.
He received a lush, musical laugh for his storytelling reward. “A crime of passion, indeed,” she said. “The world can be harsh to those who care to wonder.”
“Who is this Mr. Todd?” he blurted. “You spoke so poorly of him the night that we”—he chose his words carefully—“had our infamous misunderstanding.”
Her brows creased. The traces of laughter petered away.
“Are you a maiden in distress?” he asked, trying to keep the conversation light. “You must allow me to be chivalrous. You know my tutor imagination is chock-full of tales of King Arthur’s gallant knights and such.”
“You shouldn’t dust,” she said. “You should be reading books or writing.”
He wouldn’t be deterred. “Are you obliged to him?”
Her gaze shot to his face. “What do you know? Have you been talking to the townspeople?”
“Miss Primrose, let me help you.” He moved to reach for her hand, knocking over a glass bowl. It broke into a dozen shards. “Oh damn, er, goodness! I’ll clean this up.”
“No, no, I shall.”
&nbs
p; “I want to be of help. Why won’t you let me help you?” This question had nothing to do with the bloody bowl.
She caught the deeper meaning of his words and answered in kind. “Lottie is in the attics hanging sheets. It would help me if you assisted her.”
So she wouldn’t let him inside her worries. She kept that door shut.
He trudged up to the attics where Lottie worked. The Duke of Lucere would never mingle with a simpleton of a scullery maid. But Mr. Stephens had come to feel as protective of the vulnerable woman as Estella was. She dropped a wet linen when she saw him and rushed to give him a hug. “I love you.”
If only Estella would do the same.
As they worked along, Lucere casually mentioned Mr. Todd.
“He makes Miss Primrose cry,” Lottie replied. “He yells at her.” The simple woman could do no more to explain these sad statements. But her words further galvanized Lucere to discover this vile man who made his lovely Estella weep. And make him pay for his heinous crimes.
Lucere helped Lottie finish stringing the laundry and then found Harris in the kitchens sprinkling powdered sugar on the French puffs he had just fried.
“I have a taste for a bit of ale at the public house,” Lucere said. “Care to join me?”
Lucere knew Harris, the seer, intuited his true meaning which was, Let ’s go to the public house where everyone congregates and see what we can learn about this bloody Todd cove, and if I find myself having to deal with a bit more trouble than I can manage, I may require your fists.
“Of course,” said Harris, setting down his bowl of sugar.
* * *
The public house was a sagging, timbered building devoid of any ninety-degree angles. The main chamber smelled like two hundred years of smoke, ale, and meat pies. The tables were clustered around a massive fireplace that soughed with a lulling, wood fire. The male inhabitants of Lesser Puddlebury leaned on the back legs of their chairs and conversed between puffs from their pipes and sips from their tankards.
Dukes In Disguise Page 19