The Worst Duke in the World

by Lisa Berne

  You’re right on time.

  Of course, the old lady, who then introduced herself as Mrs. Roger, could have been referring to the coach’s traveling schedule, but somehow Jane didn’t think that was quite what she had meant. Still, before she could gather her scattered wits to try and frame a rational inquiry, Mrs. Roger had taken her over to where her husband happened to be standing with his gig and horse, hustled Jane up onto the high front seat, and said:

  You’re to ask for old Mrs. Penhallow.

  More bewildered than ever, Jane had thought about the fragile, yellowed letter she had in her possession, and only said, haltingly:

  At Surmont Hall?

  Mrs. Roger had looked up at her and calmly answered, Well, of course.

  And just for a second Jane felt like she had asked a stupid question.

  A loud complaining rumble from her empty stomach abruptly reminded her that she’d been standing on the wide gracious porch of Surmont Hall like a wax dummy. Well, it was now or never, she supposed.

  So Jane lifted her hand and rapped the knocker in a way that sounded, she hoped, neither too assertive nor too timid—the easy, casual knock of a person who was certainly going to be admitted into this very, very grand house despite looking as if she really ought to be going around the back to the servants’ entrance and begging for a bowl of soup.

  Which she might, in fact, shortly be doing.

  A blast of cold sharp wind whipped at the hems of Jane’s gown and pelisse and, as if embodied in an unseen malevolent hand, it also ripped from her head her old flat-crowned straw bonnet, which flew high into the air, did three or four jaunty somersaults, and landed gracefully onto the tranquil waters of the large ornamental pond which lay beyond the curving graveled carriage sweep.

  Jane was just about to go darting after it (as it was her only hat) when the big dark door opened and instead she was startled into immobility again. A beautifully dressed, well-fed, very clean young footman stood there, looking inquiringly at her.

  “May I help you, miss?”

  “Yes, please.” Jane realized that her voice had emerged all weak and croaky, like that of a despairing frog, perhaps, and hastily she cleared her throat. “I’ve—I’ve come to see Mrs. Penhallow.”

  “Which one, miss?”

  Jane gaped at the footman. Was this a trick question? How many Mrs. Penhallows could there possibly be? A dozen—a hundred—a thousand? Into her muddled mind came Mrs. Roger’s instructions and she said rather wildly, “The—ah—older Mrs. Penhallow, if you please.”

  A little doubtfully, the footman said, “Is she expecting you, miss?”

  “I—I have a letter.” This was true, although Jane was miserably conscious that her answer was more than a little opaque. Her stomach rumbled again, as if to helpfully remind her of just how miserable things were.

  “Very well, miss. Won’t you please come inside?” The footman stepped aside, and gratefully Jane went into the light and warmth of an immense high-ceilinged hall, catching quick glimpses of an enormous fireplace flanked by gleaming suits of armor, a coat of arms carved into the massive chimney-piece, a large and unnerving display of old weapons on one wall, a wide curving staircase leading to the upstairs.

  Everything was so big—and it made her feel so very small.

  Jane shrank a little inside her pelisse, feeling extremely out of place among all this elegance and grandeur, and also hoping she hadn’t tracked mud inside. Her idea back in Nantwich, to upend her life because of a yellowy old letter discovered by chance, had seemed so brilliant and important at the time, but now it struck her as reckless, demented, asinine, ruinous folly.

  Still, maybe there would be soup.

  She thought of a nice fragrant steaming hot bowl of it, filled with, say, chunks of beef, and with carrots and parsnips and onions. Maybe some celery and diced potatoes, too.

  Then she pictured a lovely thick slice of fresh bread, with a spongy tender crumb and a crisp chewy crust.

  No, two slices. Why not?

  In her mind’s eye she pictured herself lavishly spreading onto the bread as much butter as she liked.

  Lots and lots of it, fresh-churned and creamy, with a little sprinkle of salt, perhaps.

  Covering every bit of the slice, all the way to the crust.

  She would eat these two buttery slices very methodically—it would give her soup a chance to cool a little.

  Next she imagined another slice of bread, which she wouldn’t butter, but would instead dip into her soup. It would soak up the rich beefy broth, and get all soft and drippy, and she’d have to carefully bite at it so as not to spill a single drop.

  After that, she’d spoon up everything else.

  Then, when she had nearly finished the bowl, she would use some more bread to mop up the last of the broth, wiping her bowl clean.

  Of course, there would be plenty more soup and bread, and it would be perfectly all right for her to have seconds, so—

  Jane realized that she was salivating, and that drool was just about to start spooling out of the side of her mouth. Quickly she swallowed. As she did, she heard, from within a corridor off the hall, a man say, in a deep, cool, aristocratic-sounding voice tinged with faint amusement:

  “Cremwell’s been telling me that Johns—the Hastings pigman—has been grossly insulting him in the Riverton pubs, denigrating his professional expertise, mocking his appearance, and casting aspersions on his mother’s fidelity.”

  “Dear me,” said another voice, a woman’s, also very cool and aristocratic. “The passions of these pigmen! You ought, perhaps, to speak with Radcliffe, before they come to actual blows.”

  Nervously Jane turned toward these new voices and, her fingers clenched tight on the handle of her valise, watched as from the corridor came two people walking side by side.

  One was a tall, broad-shouldered, excessively good-looking man in his early thirties, with neatly cropped brown hair and penetrating dark eyes, and dressed very fine in a dark blue jacket, dark breeches, and tall glossy boots.

  The other person was a handsome, slender old lady, very straight and graceful, with silvery curls and sharp blue eyes, and clad in a soft dove-gray gown of marvelous elegance and simplicity.

  Jane stared at her, her heart thumping hard within her chest, hearing in her mind once again Mrs. Roger’s firm voice:

  You’re to ask for old Mrs. Penhallow.

  She took a few tentative steps forward. “Please, ma’am—are you—may I speak with you, please?” Her voice felt to her as if it were being swallowed up in this enormous hall, but apparently it was loud enough to attract the attention of the handsome man and the elegant old lady, for they both paused and turned to look at her.

  The old lady’s reaction was more intense—far, far more intense—than Jane could ever have anticipated.

  At first moving over Jane with mild curiosity, those sharp blue eyes suddenly widened, her mouth went slack, and the old lady gasped out:

  “Titus!”

  Her face gone white as snow, she staggered back and would have fallen if not for the swift action of the man beside her, who wrapped his arm around her to keep her upright.

  The old lady didn’t faint, but she certainly looked as if she had seen a ghost.

  Chapter 2

  Tugging her skirt down to cover her exposed ankles as best she could, Jane sat gingerly on the edge of a sofa which was upholstered in soft pink and embroidered in a repeating motif of roses, from buds to blooms. It was a very charming and elegant sofa, which was why she was trying to occupy as little of it as possible, all too conscious of how grubby her gown was. Nervous tension was skittering up and down her spine in a very uncomfortable way, and she felt like a gray bedraggled sparrow which had somehow landed amidst a family of sleek, shining swans.

  Grouped around her in this cozy and comfortable saloon was the old lady, Mrs. Henrietta Penhallow, who had rallied and was now sitting bolt upright with her blue eyes fixed on Jane with a painful intensity;
her grandson, the handsome, aristocratic Mr. Gabriel Penhallow, whose manner was civil, but reserved and watchful; and his pretty wife, Livia, who had come from the nursery where she had been with their children and now sat next to Jane on the flowery pink sofa, her forest-green eyes wide and wondering.

  Maybe, Jane thought rather miserably, she should have simply gone around to the back of the house, begged for a bowl of soup, and crept away. What on earth was she doing here? She glanced over to the doorway, half-wondering if she should make a dash for it.

  “You say you have a letter, Miss Kent?” said the old lady.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Abandoning the idea of a hasty retreat, however appealing, Jane reached down to the valise which she had set next to her feet, opened it, and pulled from it an old, crumbling chapbook entitled Four Hundred Practical Aspects of Vinegar As Used to Reduce Corpulence, Purify the Humours, Improve the Complexion, and Attract a Most Desirable Spouse.

  Carefully she opened the little book; between the first pages was the old yellowed letter. She took hold of it and leaned across the low table that separated her and the old lady. “Here it is.”

  With equal carefulness Henrietta Penhallow took the letter, and Jane, rigid with anxiety, watched as her eyes moved rapidly across the lines and down the page, then did it twice more.

  “Well, Grandmama?” said Gabriel Penhallow.

  The old lady gave him the letter to read, and when he was finished, he silently passed it along to his wife Livia. Jane didn’t need to look at it again to know its contents; she had read it so many times she knew it all by heart.

  4 October 1780

  My darling Charity,

  I long to see you—to hold you in my arms again—to put an end to this curst sneaking about. First I’ve got this curricle race against Calthrop—I’m honor-bound to it, you know, I can’t back out—which of course I shall win as he is a ham-handed ass despite his claims of being a superior whip—but it will take me to Brighton and back, which means the soonest I can come for you will be Thursday next. Hey ho! Be packed and ready, my dearest girl—meet me at the church on Decker Street, I’ll be waiting for you at noon with the parson standing by and a special license in my pocket. Man and wife at last! We’ll dash to France for a bit, till the flap of our elopement dies down, and then I’ll take you to Surmont Hall to meet my family. I know they will come to love you as I do. And Somerset is beautiful country, you’ll enjoy it very much, I’m sure.

  We shall be the happiest couple in the world, you and I.

  Yours forever,

  Titus

  Gently Livia gave the letter back to Jane, and she slid it between the pages of the old chapbook, then put it on the table.

  Gabriel Penhallow said, “Is that Titus’ handwriting, Grandmama?”

  “Yes. I’ve no doubt it’s genuine.” Old Mrs. Penhallow looked to Jane, studying her all over again with that same eager, painful curiosity. “Charity was your grandmother, you say?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But why this delay? It’s been nearly forty years since—” The shadow of old grief, freshly renewed, passed across Mrs. Penhallow’s face, but somehow she sat up even straighter. “It’s been nearly forty years since my son Titus died.”

  Jane leaned forward again. “He died, ma’am? I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Yes. He perished in that race. Apparently his opponent—Edmund Calthrop—rammed his curricle against Titus’, which sent Titus and his team off an embankment. Richard—my husband—well, I had to restrain him from going after Calthrop, who, in any event, fled to the Netherlands where he was shortly killed himself, in some kind of vulgar barroom quarrel. As for my poor impetuous Titus—they found a special license in a pocket of his waistcoat, though it hadn’t yet been filled out with names.”

  “So he never came for Charity,” Livia said softly. “He meant to, though, didn’t he? How very sad. What happened to her, Miss Kent?”

  “She died, ma’am, not long after giving birth to a son, Josiah—my father—but I never knew much about her. It was only when my great-grandmother, Charity’s mother, was very old, and began to speak more freely, that I learned a little more. She kept talking about Charity’s terrible fall, the shame of the family, and how Charity stubbornly refused to name the father of her baby.”

  Old Mrs. Penhallow was slowly shaking her silvery head. “If only she had. How differently things might have turned out.”

  Into Jane’s mind came an image of the cold, drafty, tumbledown little house in which she had lived for all her life back in Nantwich. It could easily have fit into the massive hall through which she had just passed, and with room to spare. But before she let herself fall into a dangerously wistful dream of what might have been, she gave herself a little shake and went on:

  “Yes, well—Charity never did say, ma’am. And when I found the letter a few months ago, hidden inside that chapbook, it was another piece I thought I could add to the puzzle.” Jane drew a deep breath and took the plunge, hoping she wouldn’t sound ridiculous, impertinent, or both, and thus promptly booted out of the house by the outraged Penhallows. “You see, I—I wondered if Titus was the father of Charity’s baby.”

  “He most certainly was the father, and therefore your grandfather,” Mrs. Penhallow said. “You need only to look at his portrait. Gabriel, if you would bring it to Miss Kent?”

  “Of course.” Gabriel Penhallow rose to his feet, took from the fireplace mantel a small framed painting, and extended it to Jane, who carefully received it in both hands and stared down at it, her breath catching in her throat. It was uncannily like looking at her own reflection in a mirror. The same wavy hair, the color of palest straw. Eyes of an unusual gray, with thick dark eyelashes and above, dark winged eyebrows. Even the same pointed chin. “My God.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Penhallow. “The likeness is unmistakable, which explains my shock upon seeing you in the Great Hall. For further confirmation, you may wish at some point to see Titus’ other portraits, most of which hang in our Picture Gallery. Well! It seems, Miss Kent, that I am, in fact, your great-grandmother.”

  Jane stared at that handsome lined face opposite her, her hands gripped tight on the portrait frame as if it were the only solid thing in a topsy-turvy world. Was it really possible that her wild and rather desperate guess had been correct?

  Old Mrs. Penhallow continued firmly, answering Jane’s unspoken question: “Yes, thanks to the letter, your astonishing resemblance to Titus, and the license that was found in his pocket, I have no doubt. I’m your great-grandmother, and Gabriel is your cousin.”

  Jane stared at them both, amazed, thrilled, her heart beating violently in her chest with a kind of stunned happiness.

  “A day of wonders, to be sure,” remarked Gabriel Penhallow, his manner a little less cool, his expression a little less reserved. “A long-lost relation turning up on one’s doorstep. One feels quite like a character in a storybook.”

  “One certainly does,” responded Mrs. Penhallow. “A feeling I’ve had more than once in my long, long life. Miss Kent, may I inquire as to your age?”

  “I’m twenty, ma’am.”

  “Indeed? You look younger. Perhaps it’s the slightness of your person.”

  Slightness of your person. Jane had to repress a sudden crazy desire to laugh. What a tactful way to say skeletally thin. Politely she replied, “Perhaps, ma’am.”

  “How very extraordinary this all is!” Livia exclaimed. “Jane—if you don’t mind my calling you that?—I have so many questions! Which I hope isn’t horribly rude of me? Oh—here’s Mary with tea. Thank you, Mary, I’ll move this little book so you can set down the tray.”

  As the maidservant placed on the low table a large, laden silver tray, Jane could feel saliva pooling in her mouth again and she forced herself to tear her gaze away from a plate heaped high with what looked to be ham sandwiches, cut attractively on the diagonal. Lord, oh Lord, there were devilled eggs too, and muffins, and a whole entire se
edcake, dotted with caraway seeds and fragrant with cinnamon that teased at her nostrils in the most seductive way.

  Sternly Jane instructed her stomach not to rumble again, and for a few moments she felt that same disconcerting urge to laugh. Here she was, having miraculously found these interesting (and also slightly terrifying) new family members, thinking—once again—about food.

  Well, who could blame her?

  After two long years without much to eat, a certain interest in the subject was only natural.

  “Four Hundred Practical Aspects of Vinegar . . .” Livia had picked up the chapbook and was looking with fresh wonder at the title. “. . . As Used to Reduce Corpulence, Purify the Humours, Improve the Complexion, and Attract a Most Desirable Spouse. Jane, why did Charity keep Titus’ letter in this? Did it have a special significance for her?”

  Jane turned to face Livia, which was a fairly effective way of keeping the tea-tray out of her direct line of sight, although peripheral vision was still a bit of a problem. “Charity’s parents had a little print-shop in London, ma’am. They put out all kinds of pamphlets and chapbooks, mostly with—ah—advice like this. Apparently all written by my great-grandfather.”

  “Very creative,” said old Mrs. Penhallow dryly, and gave a sudden crack of laughter. “Oh, I can easily imagine Titus wandering into a shop like that, and buying several of these pamphlets as a joke to dispense among his friends! Ever one for a lark, my darling madcap Titus. That must have been how he met Charity.”

  “And so perhaps Charity tucked his letter into one of her family’s chapbooks,” said Livia. “But you only discovered it a few months ago, Jane?”

  “Yes, ma’am. My great-grandmother died this past autumn, and with my parents long gone, it was just me left. I knew I couldn’t afford to stay in our house much longer, so I started clearing out the old trunks and boxes stored in our attic. That’s how I found the chapbook with the letter, in a little valise of Charity’s. This same one.” She nodded at the valise next to her feet, saw her skinny exposed ankles again, and gently set aside Titus’ portrait so she could tug her skirt down an inch or two. Titus: her grandfather!