The Worst Duke in the World

by Lisa Berne

  He bowed over Jane’s extended hand very gracefully and gave her a long, long look from beneath sensuously heavy eyelids as he did.

  “A great pleasure,” he said, “to make your acquaintance, Miss Kent,” and in his cultured aristocratic voice was a faintly caressing note which had Jane looking back at him in surprise before moving on to Lady Felicia.

  Dazzling in white sarsenet and shimmering spider-gauze, in her dark curls a golden coronet of sparkling emeralds and dangling low on the white skin of her breast a long rope of matching emeralds, Lady Felicia smiled very affably at Jane.

  “It’s too divine to meet you, Miss Kent, I do hope we’ll get to know each other better.”

  “I hope so too, Lady Felicia,” answered Jane politely, and stepped aside as into the Great Hall came Miss Humphrey and Miss Trevelyan as well as Mr. Pressley whom they had conveyed to Hastings in their little carriage. She heard a soft hissing noise from somewhere above her head, and looked up to the staircase where she saw, between the balusters, Wakefield crouching on the steps and holding Snuffles.

  As she smiled up at him, he lifted one of Snuffles’ tiny paws to wave at her. She gave a little wave back, thought how adorable the two of them were, wished she could go up the stairs to better say hullo (and pet Snuffles), but then other people came in, introductions abounded, Jane focused hard on remembering Great-grandmother’s etiquette pointers, and eventually they all proceeded to the drawing-room and shortly thereafter to a very large and grand dining-room.

  Jane was placed between Mr. Pressley and Sir Gregory Stoke, a baronet who lived on the other side of Riverton, and who, it turned out, had a pig he was planning on entering into this year’s Fattest Pig competition at the fête. From him, as course after course came and went, she learned a lot about his Doris (a Hampshire breed, extremely fond of vegetables and meat scraps, calm-tempered except when having her hooves inspected, distressingly subject to worms, but otherwise robust) and about the care and feeding of pigs in general.

  Sir Gregory seemed very nice, but Jane was still rooting for the Duchess to win.

  With Mr. Pressley she had an interesting conversation about literature, and he told her about some of his favorite authors including Geoffrey Chaucer, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Mary Wollstonecraft, and a newer writer, a Miss Austen, whose Mansfield Park, he said, was one of the finest, subtlest novels he had ever read. Kindly he promised to lend Jane his copies of Miss Austen’s books if the Penhallow library didn’t already have them, and suggested she begin with the charming Pride and Prejudice.

  Occasionally, as the meal progressed, Jane was able to glance around the long table.

  The Duke sat at the head, still looking grave and remote, on either side of him Lady Felicia (very cheerful and animated) and Great-grandmother Henrietta (pleasant but also a trifle satirical in her expression). At the foot of the table sat Lady Margaret (also very cheerful and animated), with the Viscount (Byronesquely moody and bored-looking) on her left and another gentleman from the neighborhood on her right (Jane couldn’t see his face very well because of a giant vase of flowers that was in the way).

  Once or twice she got that intense and curious feeling of being watched, and looked hopefully toward the Duke, but it wasn’t him, and when she swept her gaze down the table she realized that the Viscount was staring at her with those flashing dark eyes of his.

  Uneasily Jane wondered if her aigrette had gotten all lopsided, or if she had some of that delicious spinach, baked in a rich sauce of cheese and cream, visibly stuck between her teeth—a more likely scenario as she had partaken of it quite liberally.

  But later, when dinner was over and the ladies had left the dining-room and she could slip away and look privately in a mirror, she saw that although there was just a tiny bit of spinach between her two front teeth, she otherwise looked entirely presentable.

  With the nail-edge of her forefinger she was able to dislodge the spinach, then grinned at her reflection just to be sure. Goodness, she looked rather like a clown doing that. She let her face relax, and as she returned to the drawing-room where the ladies were congregating, she recalled the time a traveling circus had come to Nantwich. Some of its performers had, by way of advertisement, paraded along the mean little high street. There had been acrobats, and people on stilts waving flambeaux, and somebody riding a remarkable two-wheeled contraption, and a couple of clowns with their faces painted all white except for around their eyes and their mouths where they displayed a great false crimson smile.

  Jane, probably nine or ten at the time, had loathed and feared these clowns in equal parts.

  It was just as well there had been no money to attend the show.

  Even now, if a circus came to Riverton, she would avoid it as she would a giant hole in the ground.

  It was a comforting thought.

  When Jane stepped into the drawing-room, she was hailed by Lady Felicia, who called out her name and patted the empty seat next to her on the sofa where she sat. “I’ve saved you a spot! Do come join us!”

  With a reluctance she hoped she was concealing, Jane went to sit with Lady Felicia on the sofa, opposite Lady Margaret and the Countess; nearby, neat and elegant in amber-colored silk, was Miss Trevelyan, and further away, in groups of two and three, were Great-grandmother, Livia, Miss Humphrey, and some other neighborhood ladies.

  “I was just telling Lady Margaret how much we enjoyed seeing her ruin today,” said Lady Felicia smilingly. “So charming.”

  “Yes, I do love a good ruin,” said her mother the Countess. “So terribly fashionable—all the very best people have them. I daresay Surmont Hall has one also, Miss Kent?”

  “No, I don’t believe so.”

  “Really? How terribly odd. Ours, you know, dates back at least a decade. Have you thought about having a hermit brought on?” she said to Lady Margaret. “It would add so much tone. If you do, consider your candidates closely. Our most recent one left after only a year. He said he was bored.”

  Miss Trevelyan gave a crack of laughter, which seemed to surprise the Countess who looked at her with eyebrows raised.

  “Well, even without a hermit, it’s a very charming ruin,” said Lady Felicia. “I enjoyed our little tour so much, Lady Margaret. Your temple is simply divine. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a charming succession house. Oh, and your gardener! I was quite charmed by his gruff manner. Perhaps he’d be interested in being a hermit on a part-time basis? He would look simply divine in that canvas sack we had our hermit wear—don’t you think so, Mama?”

  “Oh yes, very charming, my dear. And, of course, terribly authentic.”

  Lady Felicia smiled and nodded. “Hastings is such a charming, charming place, Lady Margaret. I quite dote on it, you know.”

  Jane watched as Lady Margaret smiled and nodded also, and then the Countess said:

  “I understand you’re a writer, Miss Trevelyan? Such a terribly unusual occupation for a female.”

  “I daresay it is, My Lady,” answered Miss Trevelyan with perfect equanimity.

  “What impelled you to take it up?”

  “Aside from the need to earn my own living, you mean?”

  “Ah! Necessity! A terribly harsh mistress, is it not? You didn’t care for governessing, or teaching in a school?”

  “I taught for a little while in Bath, and found it insupportably dull. It was Miss Humphrey who encouraged me to try my hand at what I really love, which is writing.”

  “How charming! And you’re currently writing about the various Tudor queens?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Henry the Eighth’s, to be precise.”

  “Jane Seymour was always my favorite,” said Lady Felicia. “She knew how to be a proper wife. I liked Katherine of Aragon, too, because she was a real princess. And I always thought Anne of Cloves was just so dull.”

  “Yet she managed to not get her head chopped off,” said Miss Trevelyan, “in a deeply distressing life-or-death situation far from her own country. She was m
uch cleverer than people give her credit for. Only consider how she was able to outmaneuver both Henry and her political enemies, who would have very much liked to see her sent to the block. I’ve just finished her biography, by the way. It’s off to my publisher, and I’ve started in on poor Catherine Howard.”

  “I don’t feel sorry for her,” Lady Felicia said. “She knew the rules, and was unchaste anyway. She got what she deserved.”

  Miss Trevelyan looked at her, amiably but with a certain quizzical look in her eyes. “What if the rules were unfair, Lady Felicia?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The rules which dictated that men could take their pleasure freely both before and after marriage, whereas women had to operate by very different standards, and suffer the consequences if discovered. Not so very different from today’s standards,” Miss Trevelyan added thoughtfully.

  There was a silence.

  Jane said warmly, “I’m looking forward to reading your book, Miss Trevelyan,” only she was halfway through the sentence when Lady Margaret said:

  “I do hope the weather will be just a trifle warmer tomorrow.”

  “Yes, that would be most charming,” agreed the Countess.

  Lady Felicia said, “Do you ride, Miss Kent? We’re going hunting.”

  “Only a little. I’m still learning.”

  Her dark eyes wide, Lady Felicia replied, “Still learning? Oh—I daresay that before—” She lowered her voice, as if mentioning something that ought not to be discussed in polite company. “—before you came here, you had no chance to learn. How very dreadful for you! Riding is such a charming pastime.”

  “Yes,” said Jane, “very charming,” and had to resist the urge to sarcastically thank Lady Margaret for broadcasting to yet more people the story of her background. She also had to resist a sudden and useless urge to mentally kick herself for having been so high-minded and refusing to lie about it, as well as also resisting the equally useless urge to speculate on how different her life might have been if Grandmother Charity had revealed the name of her baby’s father . . .

  . . . And if Great-grandmother Kent had somehow gotten in touch with Great-grandmother Henrietta . . .

  . . . Who might have swept into Nantwich years ago and carried Jane away to Surmont Hall . . .

  . . . Where she would have been raised in comfort and warmth and security, and educated, and taught how to dance and use the right fork, and then would never have to sit next to someone like the confident and beautiful Lady Felicia, being patronized and additionally having to repress awful, stupid, bitter, entirely unhelpful feelings of envy that were making her insides rather hurt.

  And then Jane’s fancy veered off in an even more painful direction.

  If Titus and Charity had managed to get married, their baby would have been legitimate, and everything would have been entirely different, and . . .

  . . . And Jane’s father Josiah certainly wouldn’t have married a blacksmith’s daughter who lived in the middle of nowhere, and thus she, Jane, wouldn’t even have been born.

  For a few agonizing moments Jane actually felt angry at Titus and Charity.

  After which she felt guilty, and sad for them, and also sad for herself.

  Then she got her bearings again and fought her way free from her sudden funk, reminding herself that the past was the past and couldn’t be changed, and that everything (both good and bad) had made her who she was today (which was, really, just fine); then she saw that Miss Trevelyan was looking at her, and ever so slightly she winked at Jane, and Jane immediately felt very glad to have Miss Trevelyan for a friend and also her insides felt better right away.

  The conversation meandered on to the latest Court scandals, a topic which Jane found of little to no interest, so her mind wandered here and there while the others spoke. At one point she found herself gazing rather fixedly at Lady Felicia, and realized that she was trying to envision her as the Duke’s wife, and made herself both look away and stop imagining something that bothered her.

  Something that bothered her more than she liked to admit.

  And so she had to fight her way out of another funk that threatened to envelop her.

  After what felt like a very long boring time—as Jane couldn’t have cared less what inane things the Prince Regent had said and done—the men came into the drawing-room, people rearranged themselves, and Jane was sorry that the Duke went to sit with Sir Gregory, and even sorrier that Viscount Whitton intercepted her as she was on her way toward Miss Humphrey and Miss Trevelyan, and so she felt more or less obliged to go sit with him on a sofa and be stared at with those eyes of his while he talked about his various Society friends, his racing horses, the London clubs to which he belonged, his favorite tailor, and where he bought his watch-fobs, none of these topics being at all spellbinding as far as she was concerned.

  Still, he was interesting to look at, in the way one might gaze with mild curiosity at a well-executed painting or sculpture, and that was, at least, something to pass the time. He really was extraordinarily handsome. Almost unbelievably so. Jane supposed there were a lot of women who would want to do more than simply look at him.

  Suddenly she remembered Miss Trevelyan saying, the first time she had met her:

  You may inspire me to try my hand at a novel—it would make a splendid plot, you know. A lovely young woman, born to a life of humble obscurity, discovers at twenty she’s actually a member of one of England’s oldest and most distinguished families. Although it would hardly be innovative, would it? Been done to death, really. Also, it would probably be better if the young woman turned out to be a princess or a duchess or something along those lines—especially if there’s some sort of dark, enigmatic hero, too, with a fine curling lip of disdain. I daresay the book would sell better that way.

  The Viscount, Jane thought, would make a delightful character in a book like that, being so classically handsome, so perfectly coiffed, so beautifully dressed. Why, his dark evening-shoes were so shiny that she could literally see her own reflection in them. She knew this because once or twice, biting back a yawn, she had leaned forward in the hopes of disguising her clenched jaw and discovered their mirror-like effect, which was a helpful way to quickly check on her aigrette again.

  At any rate, would he be the hero?

  He looked like one, but into Jane’s mind came the memory of Great-grandmother Kent saying sourly:

  Handsome is as handsome does.

  Hmmm. He would have to be rewritten, in order to make him less boring. Just then the Viscount broke off from whatever he was nattering on about (Jane had stopped listening some time ago) and softly said, for her ears alone:

  “You are a very desirable woman, Miss Kent.”

  Now this was slightly more interesting. Jane perked up at once.

  “Thank you ever so much,” she said demurely. “How charming of you to say so.”

  “You’re charming. I’ve never met a woman I wanted more.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. You’ve set my heart aflame, Miss Kent. I wasn’t alive—truly alive—till I met you.”

  This was definitely more like it, Jane thought. He was sounding exactly like a hero in Miss Trevelyan’s novel. “Do go on.”

  “Would that we were alone.”

  Jane batted her eyelashes. “That would be divine.”

  “It would be heaven here on earth,” softly said the Viscount, his fine dark eyes, intensely looking into her own, suddenly reminding her of small bonfires, perfect for roasting chestnuts. Or warming up a potato. Which reminded her. When would the tea-tray arrive?

  “You stare, Miss Kent.”

  “I do beg your pardon. You have the most fascinating eyes.”

  “You do.”

  “No, you do,” Jane said, for argument’s sake.

  “No—you. Pools of liquid silver. I would gladly sell my soul to fall into them. And stay there forever, subsumed in their incandescence.”

  “How kind.”

&
nbsp; “Desire for you runs through my veins like quicksilver, Miss Kent.”

  He had said “silver” twice, so she felt comfortable murmuring, “So divine.”

  “Dare I hope—dare I have the audacity to hope—that you feel the same way too?”

  “A lady,” said Jane, “never tells.” She batted her eyelashes again.

  He put a hand to his chest. “My heart beats for you and you alone, Miss Kent. May I share with you some poetry of mine?”

  Poetry! Could this get any better? “Please do.”

  The Viscount cleared his throat. “‘You are my lady, my love—Fluttering sweet like the dove—You are my one and only—Without you I am sad and lonely. I sigh, I repine—Lady, lady, please be mine.’”

  Jane put a hand to her chest, as if overcome with emotion. “How very, very charming.”

  “I composed it just now for you, Miss Kent.”

  Jane strongly doubted it, and even though she hadn’t read much poetry so far in her life, it was pretty clear that the Viscount was no Mr. Wordsworth (or even a Lord Byron). But she said, “Too, too divine.” And she wondered how much longer they could go on talking like this. They both sounded like blithering idiots, but not in the lovely enjoyable way she and the Duke did when they were blithering. That had been sincere, because her mind had whirled to a slow delicious halt at the exact same time her body had quickened, and if she had to guess, he had been feeling that way also.

  Whereas this . . .

  It was hard to tell which was worse: if the Viscount was being insincere, or if this was really how he talked.

  What on earth did he want from her?

  Handsome is as handsome does.

  The back of Jane’s neck suddenly prickled, and she looked up and around to see that from halfway across the room, Lady Margaret was looking fixedly at her. For a crazy few seconds, she wondered if Lady Margaret was trying to envision her as the Viscount’s wife.