Dukes In Disguise

by Grace Burrowes, Susanna Ives, Emily Greenwood

  “Oh?” His voice sounded different. Tight. “Are you engaged?”

  She blushed. How had she come to be talking of such things with him? And yet, despite his capacity for growling, he was not judgmental, and he listened well. It was foolish to want to tell him much of anything about herself, but she did want to. And as long as she didn’t give too many details, would it really matter?

  “The thing is that my father has chosen someone for me to marry—a friend of his—but he’s quite old and full of his own opinions and not a bit interested in what anyone else has to say. And his breath smells like a crypt.”

  “Sniffed many crypts, have you?”

  She chuckled, though he didn’t, as though the idea of her marrying a man like the baron could not really be amusing. Which it wasn’t.

  He’d told her almost nothing about himself, she realized, and indeed, he seemed like a man with an invisible hedge of thorns around him. And yet, she felt a constant pull toward him. She found herself wondering what it would be like to marry Fitzwilliam.

  Stop building a fantasy! she told herself sternly. She knew what such men were like, and just because Fitzwilliam had a sense of humor didn’t mean he wouldn’t assert his powerful nature. She would be overwhelmed by him.

  * * *

  Rowan could easily imagine the sort of disgusting old oaf Miss Beckett’s father meant her to marry, and the idea of her liveliness being extinguished by a loveless marriage made his blood boil.

  Never mind that he himself was already falling under her spell.

  He supposed this unwanted suitor was the reason she was at Foxtail. She must have left home to avoid the pressure to marry the man. And if she went against the wishes of her family, he guessed she would likely have to find her own way—which could be a lonely, dangerous path for a young woman.

  “Can’t you find a man who actually does appeal to you and marry him?”

  He was being rude, but he didn’t care. There was something about this woman.

  He kept telling himself that it was ridiculous to feel such a connection to a person he’d just met, let alone a woman. But he did feel it, and the more he knew her, the more he liked her. The very fact that she’d had the pluck to resist her family’s plans to sentence her to an untenable life spoke volumes about her strength of character.

  “Well, yes,” she said dryly, “that idea had occurred to me.”

  “Ah,” he said. “The assembly.” Hence the trip into town for the ribbons that were peeking out of her reticule. Did she already have some local man in mind? Rowan’s mouth twisted. Clearly, considering her reluctance to spend time with him, he wasn’t being considered as a potential suitor.

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps you already have someone in mind,” he said, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

  “Perhaps. Oh look, I think I see some kind of shack through those trees ahead.”

  She’d changed the subject, but likely that was for the best. After all, what could he possibly intend toward this woman who was little more than a mystery to him?

  “It must be the hut folly.” He’d forgotten about it. He had only vague memories of the hut folly, mostly because it had been reserved for his parents, a place the children could go only on rare occasions. The children had hardly cared, because they’d had the cottages to sleep in.

  “A hut folly? I thought follies were supposed to be models of grand buildings.”

  “I think this one is a little different.”

  They passed through the trees, and there, in the large clearing before them, was Trethillin. Sunlight glittered on the small lake at its center.

  “Oh,” she breathed.

  The little mock village had been designed as a sort of rustic retreat, as if Foxtail’s lodge wasn’t retreat enough. But the scale of the lodge was that of something belonging to a dukedom. Trethillin was entirely different.

  Chapter Four

  * * *

  Claire was enchanted. Before them stood a scene of unexpected and gentle charm, as if the best parts of a hamlet had been scaled down and brought together in an intimate space.

  The little village consisted of a semicircle of small stone buildings framing a modest lake. There were thatched cottages, a petite barn, a square shop-like building with a sign hanging from it, and something that looked like a grotto. In the middle of the lake, on a tiny island, stood the hut folly, pathetic-looking and battered, though there was something proud about it, too, that called to her.

  “Is there a boat?” she asked. “We have to go out to the hut folly.”

  “There ought to be,” he said as they moved into the clearing, “though whether it would be lake-worthy is questionable. I don’t suppose anyone’s used this place for years. Why don’t we inspect the cottages first?”

  The three little stone cottages were each surrounded by a garden, or rather, what had once been a garden. As they approached the closest dwelling, Claire said, “Oh look, a little statue of a…” She leaned closer to the small sculpture sitting amid some delphiniums growing in a mess under one of the cottage’s windows. “Dog?”

  Fitzwilliam bent down and pushed away tall dried grasses and flower husks. “I think it’s a satyr, actually, with the head and arms missing.”

  “Grisly,” Claire said. “I like it.”

  “You must surely enjoy the lodge, then, with all the mounted animal heads.”

  She glanced at him. Was Fitzwilliam teasing her?

  “Ugh, no. That’s completely different. Those creatures were once alive. I feel them staring accusatorily at me whenever I’m in the sitting room. Thankfully, there are none in my bedchamber.”

  “Ah, I see why you chose it,” he said. “I enjoy the animal heads. They’re like quiet company.”

  “Either you share your home with utterly disagreeable people, or you simply don’t like people in general,” Claire said. “My money is on the latter.”

  “How can you say I don’t like people when I’ve invited you out here?”

  “I don’t think ‘invited’ is the right word.”

  He laughed.

  She stared at him in surprise. “You laughed.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Is there some reason I shouldn’t?”

  “I just didn’t think you would. You’ve hardly been lighthearted since I met you.”

  He leaned closer to the statue and began pulling out the surrounding weeds. “It’s sometimes easier to be brusque with people.”

  “To keep them at arm’s length?”

  He was making a tidy pile of debris to the side of the statue. “Yes,” he said, focusing on his task.

  “Why?”

  He ripped out a few more clumps so that the statue was now plainly visible amid a few sparse but pretty blue stalks of delphiniums. “Let’s just say that in general I am endowed with resources.”

  As he crouched to gain better purchase on a sturdy weed, she shamelessly noted the flexing of his thigh muscles in his buff breeches. “You mean that you are quite wealthy and well positioned, and people want things from you.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Then perhaps you feel less free around other people.” She moved closer to the door. The remains of a spider web lay across the handle, and she picked up a stick and cleared it away. “In which case, your money and power sound like burdens.”

  He stood up and brushed himself off. “If I felt that way, I should be pathetic indeed, when those very things offer great opportunities for myself and my family.”

  “Even if they lead others to believe you have endless favors to supply, or that you are not, in essence, the same as they are?”

  “Am I the same?” He stepped closer and leaned over her shoulder to remove a long stick that was dangling from the eaves, where it must have been lodged by a strong wind. His height, his heat, and the scent of his soap filled her senses as he took his time. She repressed the urge to lean into him, and after her heart had nearly thumped giddily out of her chest several time
s, he finally stepped back.

  “Well,” she said, her voice a little husky, “perhaps you are not. Perhaps you have no desire for silly things like laughter and foolishness. Perhaps you don’t make mistakes like the rest of us. Perhaps, as someone who may already have everything, there is nothing left for you to want.”

  “You presume to know me quite well,” he said.

  She took hold of the door handle and pushed, but the mechanism was stiff and wouldn’t yield to her efforts. She glanced around to see him watching her with his arms crossed.

  “On the contrary, I don’t know you at all. How could I? We’ve practically just met.”

  He looked at her steadily for a few moments, and she thought he would say something further, but he pressed his lips together and stepped forward. “Allow me,” he said. The handle surrendered to him, and the door opened inward with a heavy whine.

  A thick layer of dust coated everything inside, but even with that, Claire could see the cottage was charming, the sort of place one might imagine a family of rabbits living, if they wore clothes and cooked meals and liked to curl up by the fire with a book.

  The room was painted a pale yellow, and the square windows were hung with red toile curtains bearing scenes of laughing shepherdesses. Two sturdy chairs sat on either side of the small hearth, over which hung a still life of apples and pears. A group of prettily painted candleholders graced the mantel, along with what looked like someone’s motley collection of favorite bits and pieces.

  Beyond the chairs was a settee with a table in front of it, and Claire saw, as she moved closer, that a puzzle sat half-finished on it, as though it had been abandoned in the middle of some long-ago holiday. Through the doorway she glimpsed a modest kitchen.

  “It’s utterly charming,” she said. Surely, if she could only come and live here for a few months every year, her life would always be peaceful and balanced.

  “It’s completely disreputable,” he said.

  “It just needs cleaning,” she insisted.

  A mouse skittered across the floor near their feet, and she gasped. He arched an eyebrow at her.

  “And a cat,” she added. “It only needs to be lived in by people who appreciate it.”

  They moved upstairs to inspect the bedrooms, which were, like the first floor, extremely dusty. The bedding had clearly been popular with the mice.

  “I’m sure the duke can afford new linens,” she said, not wanting to get too close to a pillow that looked suspiciously as though it had been used as a nest.

  “Doubtless he can.”

  They inspected the two other cottages, which were in similar condition, then poked around in the grotto, which seemed to have something to do with fairies. The little shop turned out to be a “bookseller” that was clearly meant to be a small, freestanding library. Behind the diminutive barn, they found a rowboat.

  “I don’t know that we ought to use this,” Fitzwilliam said, prodding the wood with his foot. “It might be worm-eaten. We could end up at the bottom of the lake.”

  “I can swim,” she said. “Can you?”

  His eyebrow cocked in devilish reply to her challenge. They dragged the boat down to the water’s edge.

  Fitzwilliam held the boat steady for her, then stepped nimbly in after her and took the oars. He handled them with ease. As they moved quietly across the still lake in the close space of the boat, she let her eyes linger on his bent head. She told herself there was something seriously wrong with her if she was fascinated by the sight of sunlight on black hair.

  The spot of blood was gone from his cravat, and she guessed he must have changed it. Her gaze slid downward to the muscles bunching under his coat as he pulled the oars through the water, and she swallowed and made herself close her eyes. She lifted her face to the sun, but though its rays were gently warm on her cheeks, she knew sunlight wasn’t all that was heating her skin.

  They made it to the little island without sinking, though a fair amount of water had seeped into the boat by the time they pulled it onto the tiny shore.

  “This boat is none the better for being left to the elements for years,” Fitzwilliam remarked as he secured it. But Claire had already alighted and was moving toward the hut.

  Hardly more than a narrow box with a slanted roof, the folly was made of unpainted wood, and several loosened slats leaned away from the roof just under its eaves. At least half the windowpanes were broken. The roof, which was missing a number of shingles, swayed ominously downward.

  Claire stepped close to the window and peered in.

  “There’s a curtain blocking the view inside,” she said, moving toward the door.

  He caught her arm. “Wait. Perhaps we should ascertain that it’s not going to fall over before we go in.”

  She turned to him, and he dropped her arm. “I thought you said the decrepitude was meant to be an illusion.”

  “That was the idea, as far as I understand it. But after all these years of neglect, it may not be an illusion anymore. This thing looks far too hastily constructed to be sound, and the whole place seems to have been forgotten for a good dozen years. That represents a great deal of wind and rain, with the potential for structural damage.”

  “I’m sure it’s fine,” she said, gripping the door handle. Unlike the cottage door, this one opened easily with nary a sound. She stepped inside and breathed out a sigh of awe.

  “It’s a wonder,” she whispered reverently as he stepped inside next to her and pushed aside the window curtains. “And it’s not decrepit at all.”

  “There’s water damage from rain coming in the broken windows,” he pointed out.

  “A mere detail.” Her eyes roved greedily about the diminutive room.

  To her right was a bed that had clearly been designed exactly to fit its small space, with a quilt that looked like something a country granny had sewn with love. In a pretty blue glass-fronted cabinet were a small collection of dishes and an old packet of tea. Next to the petite fireplace hung two cooking pans, and on the floor stood a basin.

  “It’s a place to come when you want to utterly escape from the world,” she said.

  Across from the bed and against the wall—a journey of only a few feet in the small space—stood a slim table and a chair, a little spot that would be perfect for writing letters while a summer breeze floated in through the little windows.

  On the wall above the table were shelves containing shells and what looked like doll furniture constructed of twigs. She stepped closer and picked up a polished stone even as her eyes were drawn upward to the collection of miniature portraits in round frames that hung in a row above the shelf.

  “It’s quite amazing,” she said as she examined a portrait of a young man in the dated style of a few decades before, “how much of a family resemblance you have. Or, at least, I assume these are people in the duke’s immediate family—it just says ‘John.’” Each of the portraits had a little plate underneath it with only a first name, giving them an intimate feel, as though the family wished to be simply themselves here.

  She realized with a start that she might just have given herself away—perhaps even a second cousin would be expected to recognize whichever members of Starlingham’s family these people were. But Fitzwilliam simply peered closer at the pictures and said, “Mmm.” He lingered briefly over the portraits, then strode toward the back of the hut and pushed aside more curtains. The little windows stood on either side of a door, and when he opened it outward, Claire sighed.

  Through the doorway was a perfect view of the sun-dappled lake and, beyond it, the large overgrown garden to the side of the last cottage. None of the buildings were caught in the frame of the doorway, though—the view was of nature only. She moved to stand next to him.

  “It’s so peaceful here,” she said. “I don’t think I would ever want to leave. Do you suppose the duke really will fix this place up and use it?”

  * * *

  Rowan was struggling not to look at Miss Beckett, because wh
enever he did, that electric feeling her presence sparked became so strong it nearly overpowered him. And her joy in this place, her open pleasure in its faded charms, was doing something to him, too. It was working upon the bindings he kept on himself. Whispering that his life might hold things he hadn’t even known he was missing. It wasn’t as if he’d been unhappy, but he’d forgotten about joy.

  Why the devil had he thought it would be a good idea to invite her out to this deserted place with him?

  The hut had been the domain of his parents during the family’s holidays there, and hadn’t been of much interest to him as a boy, when most of his energy had been focused on the intricacies of learning to hunt with bow and arrow, an obsession he’d developed after reading numerous adventure stories about the natives of America.

  “Actually, I think the duke means to sell Foxtail,” he said. “I’m meant not to let the servants know. But he wants to know what kind of shape the place is in.”

  She drew in a shocked breath and turned to him with a look of dismay. “Sell Foxtail? Why would he want to do that?”

  “I believe he has a number of properties to maintain, and some of them require great infusions of funds for their upkeep. The sale of Foxtail would provide such funds.”

  Her lips drew down in a fierce frown. “Clearly he doesn’t appreciate Foxtail since he never visits. But surely someone in the family would enjoy it. And Trethillin ought to be fixed up.”

  That wasn’t what the prospective owners wished to do with Trethillin—they apparently meant to raze the village and put in a manicured sculpture garden. He’d been prepared to find Trethillin in bad shape, which would have made it easier to convince his mother of the wisdom of selling Foxtail. But it wasn’t in bad condition—a modest amount of money would restore it to its former glory.