The Worst Duke in the World

by Lisa Berne

  She was especially curious to read about Henry the Seventh and Richard the Third. Was it really possible Richard had been the victim of Tudor propaganda? That he had been painted so dark merely in order to further their own ends? If so, that was quite underhanded of the Tudors. She would have to ask the Duke more about it the next time she saw him.

  She wondered again when that would be.

  It was so nice of him to repeat Wakefield’s invitation to come and play billiards, wasn’t it? And to be bothered about his sister asking a lot of personal questions. It was only natural, of course, that people would be curious about her. In a way, arriving as she had here at the Hall, she was a little bit like the goddess Athena, emerging so unexpectedly from her father’s head. What a curious story. Jane’s story was a curious one, too, despite her having been born in the usual fashion.

  Not long after she had arrived at Surmont Hall, Great-grandmother Henrietta had mused aloud about telling everyone that Titus had married Charity. At first Jane had thought this would be a good idea—that it was the easy, uncomplicated way which would smooth over any potentially troubling waters.

  Then she had envisioned herself among the neighborhood people.

  And she had realized she would always, always, be uneasily wondering if perhaps some of the servants, already aware of her background, had gossiped and so spread the word around the county like wildfire. (Not that she would blame them if they had; it was an interesting bit of news.) Which would put Jane in the position of being a liar. And not just herself: Great-grandmother, Cousin Gabriel, and Livia would be lying, too, on her behalf.

  That had decided her.

  So she had politely but firmly refused to go along with Great-grandmother’s plan, and, notwithstanding the heavy sadness which immediately blanketed her at the thought, she had offered to go away if being here was an embarrassment to her new family.

  Great-grandmother had looked so stricken she’d almost felt sorry for saying it, but it had felt important to stick to her guns.

  She wasn’t going to ask anyone, no matter how well-intentioned, to live a lie.

  Besides, lies, she had noticed, had a way of coming back to haunt one.

  Like the time she had snatched a sausage at the market, from the open-air grill, when she had thought the proprietor wasn’t looking. He had been, Great-grandmother Kent had been informed, Jane had denied it, but then Great-grandmother had grabbed at her burnt hands and sniffed them, and thus she had been unmasked. And slapped, and then had to endure long tedious hours of recrimination.

  Although the sausage had tasted very good, on the whole, it hadn’t been worth it.

  So, regarding her background, she wasn’t going to stand on various rooftops shouting it out to passersby, but neither was she going to deny what was true.

  Back in Nantwich, Great-grandmother would sometimes stare broodingly at Jane, and talk at length about how the sins of the fathers would be carried on the shoulders of those who came after, blackening their souls. At the time Jane hadn’t understood what she had meant, but now she did.

  It wasn’t her fault that Charity and Titus hadn’t had a chance to get married.

  Nor was it their fault, either.

  What did matter was that they had loved each other.

  Jane thought about something else she’d found in that old chapbook along with Titus’ letter to Charity.

  On one of the pages in between which the letter had been placed all those years ago, somebody—it had to have been Charity—had drawn a little heart, and inside she had written CK & TP. Forever.

  It was heartbreaking, but beautiful, too. Jane liked to think that Charity and Titus had, after death, found each other again—found their happily ever after.

  Love really was all that mattered.

  Although, of course, having enough to eat and wearing clean gowns that were long enough and not being cold all the time were nice, too.

  Thoughtfully Jane set aside the history book and reached under the covers to feel her ankles again. Yes, hurray, there really was a bit more flesh. And goodness, the skin there was delightfully sensitive. She was giving herself goose-bumps.

  What had the Duke wanted to do with her boots?

  And how charming of him to like those dilapidated old things.

  Beneath the covers Jane felt at her knees. Oh yes, better. She slid her hands up along the equally sensitive skin of her thighs, up along the sharp protuberance of her hip-bones, to her rib-cage, her small soft breasts, and the tender circles of her nipples. It felt good, touching herself, but it was also true that it was good when somebody else was doing the touching.

  The Duke, Jane remembered, had lovely big strong-looking hands, with long fingers, broad at the base and tapering toward the ends and flattened out a little, a feature that was very appealing to her.

  So appealing, in fact, that she was getting warm all over again.

  Abruptly she found herself wondering about his wife, the late Duchess, and what she had been like. Had the Duke loved her so much that he was reluctant to marry again? And was that why Lady Margaret—if what Wakefield had said was accurate—had to force him to remarry?

  Jane thought about today’s luncheon at Hastings.

  The food had been delicious, but Lady Margaret (who certainly had a lot to say on the subject of flowers) had eyes so cold they reminded Jane of stones one would find at the bottom of a river.

  Icy, icy cold.

  Jane brought her hands away from herself, tugged down the hem of her nightgown, and reached again for the history book.

  Then she remembered something else she was good at, besides surviving.

  Apparently she was good at scratching pigs.

  Jane smiled, warming up again as she thought of the Duke. She thought of dimples. And daisies. And her boots.

  She would, she decided, wear them again tomorrow to the vicarage.

  Chapter 6

  To Jane’s disappointment, Wakefield didn’t come for lessons the next day. Mr. Pressley explained that the Duke had sent a note round saying that Wakefield was a trifle under the weather. Jane hoped it wasn’t anything serious, and settled into a mathematics lesson, which was more fun than she had thought it would be, followed by an interesting interval looking at various maps of Somerset and talking about the history and geography of the area. Mr. Pressley told her that there were all kinds of old caves about, thought to have been occupied by ancient peoples thousands of years ago, and that the Somerset moors, though very rich and fertile, had a tendency toward brackishness and required constant drainage to permit farming and grazing.

  Jane had a lot of questions, and as Mr. Pressley was anxious to make up for the shortening of yesterday’s lessons, their time together ran quite late.

  When Jane got back to Surmont Hall, luncheon was over, but the kitchen staff were very nice about making up a plate for her which she enjoyed while reading another book Mr. Pressley had lent her, poems by William Wordsworth.

  Her favorite so far was “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”—she especially liked how Mr. Wordsworth compared a vast field of daffodils to the night sky, Continuous as the stars that shine / And twinkle on the milky way.

  It was surprising, and lovely, how in just a few brief lines, he managed to harmoniously connect these two very different things.

  Words were amazing, weren’t they?

  And how delightful that someone with the last name of Wordsworth had become a poet.

  Also, how delightful that the talented Katherine Penhallow—to whom she was now linked by family connection—was a writer. Pen and hallow. Perfect!

  Kent, mused Jane, meant something about knowing.

  Well, the way things were going with her lessons, there was a possibility she might actually live up to her own surname.

  After luncheon, Jane went looking for company.

  Great-grandmother would be napping, she knew, and when she went up to the nursery, the children’s nanny, speaking in a soft whisper, told Jane that all
the children were napping too.

  She went back downstairs and talked to the Hall’s butler Crenshaw, and learned that Cousin Gabriel was out somewhere on the estate looking at apple orchards, and that Livia had taken a pony-cart to visit some of the tenant-farmer families.

  So Jane put on her pelisse and bonnet again, and went outside for a long walk in the gardens to the back of the house, then amused herself meandering through the maze which, she had been informed, dated back to Elizabethan times.

  I wandered lonely as a cloud.

  It occurred to her that if she could ride a horse, or drive a pony-cart like Livia, she could go visiting people. Wakefield, say, or Miss Humphrey and Miss Trevelyan. Or go into the village. At dinner she asked if this might be a possibility.

  “By all means, my dear,” said Great-grandmother. “Riding is a highly desirable activity for any lady of Quality, as well as a suitable form of exercise for a young person. You’ll need a riding-habit, however. I can certainly ask Miss Simpkin to have one made up for you as soon as possible.”

  “Jane, you can have mine,” Livia said. “I never wear it.”

  “Oh, Livia, are you sure? Then I could begin sooner.”

  “I’ve never been much of a rider, though there was a time Gabriel tried very hard to teach me.” Livia flashed a saucy smile at Cousin Gabriel. “I’ll dig up the habit after dinner, and start on the adjustments tonight.”

  Jane watched that subtle, but unmistakable warmth come into Cousin Gabriel’s dark eyes as he smiled across the table at his wife. It must be nice, she thought, with a sudden aching twist inside her, to have somebody who smiled at one like that, and every day, too.

  A person could get used to that.

  She felt her mind drifting backward into the past, then with a great effort of will brought it back to the here and now, where she abruptly found herself thinking of a pair of deep-blue eyes, a thin sensitive face, the most delicious hands in the world . . .

  Jane, Jane, stop daydreaming, she told herself, but noticed that it took quite a lot of effort to make this vividly tempting image fade away, and then it took her a few seconds to remember that they were talking about horses and a riding-habit and a kind offer of assistance. She said, with a quick rush of gratitude:

  “Thank you very much, Livia, for altering it for me. Is there a horse I might borrow, Cousin Gabriel? And could one of the grooms teach me?”

  “We’ve horses aplenty, Jane. And if Livia can do her magic by tomorrow, I’ve got time in the morning. Titania’s been wanting lessons, too.”

  How interesting her life had become, Jane thought. Academic lessons with an eight-year-old, and riding lessons with a four-year-old. It was a good thing she actually liked being around children. And she certainly was making up for lost time, thanks to these generous relations of hers. She smiled at him. “Thank you, Cousin Gabriel.”

  So the next day, Saturday, she and Titania learned how to sit a horse, and how to walk it and gently signal it to stop, and Jane felt extremely dashing in the bottle-green habit Livia had quickly altered, with its exquisite black embroidery on the cuffs and hem, and once again her old boots were proving to be just the right footwear for the occasion. She thought of all the times in Nantwich when she had longingly watched people riding, and how marvelous it was to—amazingly—be doing it herself.

  One felt rather agreeably high up, sitting on a horse. She could hardly wait to learn how to canter and gallop.

  On Sunday the family went to church. Jane was glad to see the Duke was there, and Wakefield too, and less glad, but fatalistic, about seeing Lady Margaret, clad once again in dismal black.

  Mr. Pressley, without sounding at all pompous or bombastic, gave a thoughtful (and not too long) sermon on the topic of humility, and Jane learned that both Great-grandmother and Cousin Gabriel had very nice singing voices, and also that it was exceedingly pleasant to be sitting in exactly the right spot to be able to look at the back of the Duke’s head.

  There was an interlude, when Mr. Attfield the churchwarden was talking at length and rather boringly about raising funds to refurbish the transept, which Jane used to good purpose by gazing at the Duke’s hair and finally realizing that its color reminded her of a lion—if the advertisement for Binty’s Miracle Syrup which she had seen on a shop window in Nantwich had been a good representation of one.

  Of course it was none of her business, but she did hope the Duke would keep his hair long like that. Somehow it seemed to suit him so beautifully.

  It was strange, but as the service proceeded, Anthony had the curious feeling of being watched with a particular intensity.

  He would have turned around to see if he was correct, but as Margaret had countless times instructed Wakefield to stop twisting about on the hard uncomfortable seat, he decided that he ought to be—in this small matter at least—a worthy role model for his son.

  However, when the service was over and Anthony could very properly rise from his seat in the frontmost pew, he did turn around, and the first thing he noticed was that Jane was here in the church, too. He hadn’t seen her since Thursday, when he had driven her back to the Hall and made a complete ass of himself by talking about daisies and dimples and so on.

  He stared.

  By God, she did look like a daisy.

  Also, over her wavy flaxen hair she had on the same light blue bonnet, tied underneath her chin in a neat little bow, the color of which reminded him of a summer sky and also gave her eyes the soft deep shimmer of a stream running high.

  Those fascinating eyes came to meet his, and she smiled. Those dimples. Anthony felt his brain immediately go to mush. A surprisingly pleasant sensation, accompanied by an equally pleasant feeling of heat caroming throughout his body. The aisle between the rows of pews was crowded with people and for a few crazy seconds Anthony wanted to leap up and over the dozen or so pews which separated him from Jane.

  And then she turned away when Miss Trevelyan came up to greet her, so reluctantly he abandoned the idea which, although it would have been quite a lot of fun to try, was entirely devoid of dignity and clearly subducal.

  He moved into the aisle, where he was promptly buttonholed by the garrulous Mr. Attfield, and managed to escape only after he had promised to make a generous donation to the transept fund.

  He made it past two more rows of pews and Miss Humphrey said hullo, and so of course he had to stop and exchange a few courteous words with her (careful to avoid the painful subject of pumpkins), and after that Mr. Lumley the schoolmaster wanted to talk to him about the expansion to the Riverton school, and naturally he offered to donate to that as well, and when finally he got to the front steps of the church where he spoke with Mr. Pressley for a minute or so, he was deeply, and possibly even excessively, thankful to perceive that the Penhallow family had not rushed off to their carriage but were instead standing by the lych-gate talking with some other members of the congregation.

  Penhallow had his youngest, the baby boy, held up against his chest, and Livia was holding their sleeping toddler; their oldest, a girl, was talking to Wakefield who was eyeing her as one would confront an unsettling visitor from another planet. Jane, Anthony saw, stood a little apart, watching the two of them with that engaging twinkle in her eyes.

  As he got closer he heard the little girl saying something about a fairy who liked to ride horses and go fishing and fight battles, and Wakefield said scornfully:

  “Fairies aren’t real.”

  “Yes, they are,” retorted the little girl, pushing him hard in the chest with both hands, and Wakefield staggered back.

  “Titania,” said Penhallow, with quiet authority in his voice, and the little girl looked up at him unhappily, but subsided.

  “Hullo,” Anthony said, and Wakefield came to stand next to him.

  “I say, Father, she pushed me.”

  “I saw.”

  “Not bad for a girl,” Wakefield went on, with a certain respect in his voice. “Jane, did you see that? I nearly fell
over.” He went over to where she was standing. “Has she tried to push you?”

  “Not so far.”

  “Well, watch out.”

  “I will,” she promised gravely. “Good morning. Your Grace.”

  “Good morning, Miss Kent.” Now that Anthony was in closer proximity to her, his brain not only failed to return to its usual state of semi-coherence, his body had yet to cool to its normal temperature. He was burning up inside himself, he was more than a little agitated, his mouth had suddenly gone dry, and altogether he felt, in fact, as if he’d come down with the influenza which two years ago had felled Wakefield, but in an extremely nice way. Which of course made no sense, but these were the thoughts one had when one’s brain had dissolved. “Lovely daisy, isn’t it? That is—I mean—lovely day.”

  “Very,” Jane agreed, smiling up at him, but without mockery at his embarrassing slip of the tongue, and with such sweetness that Anthony was reminded of chocolate so delicious, so rich, that it took superhuman strength to not eat a great deal of it all at once.

  “You two still sound stuffy,” said Wakefield disapprovingly. “I say, Jane, did you miss me at lessons on Friday?”

  “I certainly did. I hope you’re fully recovered from whatever was ailing you?”

  “Oh, yes. I had undajisting, you know.”

  Anthony said to him, “Do you mean indigestion?”

  “Yes, that’s what I said. Cook made apple puffs with whipped cream, Jane, and I had four of them.”

  “Oh, those do sound good,” said Jane. “But I’m sorry they made you unwell.”