The Worst Duke in the World

by Lisa Berne

  Bunch came into the room with his salver, and behind him followed the footmen, each bearing a tall vase. One was filled with big white cheerful-looking daisies and the other with gorgeous pink roses de Provins.

  “The flowers are for you, Master Wakefield,” said Bunch. “And here are some letters which accompanied them.”

  “Father, you read them,” said Wakefield. “My eyes are still sleeping.”

  Bunch held out the salver, and Anthony took the letters and opened them. “The daisies are from Miss Humphrey and Miss Trevelyan, who send their love. And the roses are from Surmont Hall. Livia—Mrs. Penhallow, I mean—sends best wishes for a speedy recovery, from everyone at the Hall.”

  Wakefield nodded drowsily, and Bunch said:

  “A letter for you also, Miss Kent.”

  “Thank you, Bunch.”

  Anthony watched as Jane, sitting on the bed with her legs neatly tucked beneath her, took it from the salver, opened it, and silently read.

  “Who’s it from, Jane?” asked Wakefield.

  “It’s from my great-grandmother. She wants to know when I’m coming home.” Jane glanced to the windows, which were filled with the deepening shadows of sunset.

  “Can’t you stay, Jane?” Wakefield struggled up on his pillows, then shoved the covers away with a hasty gesture. “Oh, I’m hot.”

  Anthony reached to the side-table next to Wakefield’s bed, picked up the glass of barley-water, and went to sit by him. “Would you like a sip, my boy?”

  Wakefield turned his head away, to where Jane sat. “No. Jane, you’ll stay, won’t you?”

  She put her hand on his forehead. “You are a trifle warm. Won’t you have just a little barley-water? It’s very refreshing.”

  “I will if you promise to stay.”

  Anthony almost chided Wakefield for stooping to blackmail, but saw how flushed he was; his voice had gotten distressingly shrill. Then he realized that Jane was looking to him, her dark brows raised inquiringly, and once again he nodded thankfully.

  “I’ll stay,” she said.

  So Wakefield let Anthony give him some barley-water. At Bunch’s direction the footmen put the vases onto the dresser, and then Bunch said, with a tactfully lowered voice:

  “May I inquire about dinner arrangements, Your Grace?”

  “Jane’s staying, and—”

  “It’s mean to talk about dinner,” interrupted Wakefield, “when I can’t have any. Because I can’t chew. And my mouth still tastes funny.”

  “Cook has prepared for you some jellies, Master Wakefield.”

  “What kind?”

  “Your favorite, Master Wakefield—raspberry, with just a hint of lemon. Should you care for something more on the savory side, she has also prepared a beef jelly which, I believe, you have upon occasion found appetizing.”

  “I want macaroni,” said Wakefield sulkily.

  “Tomorrow, my boy, I should think,” Anthony said. “In the meantime, Cook’s jellies are the best in Somerset, you know, and quite possibly in the whole of England.”

  “I’ll have some, Wakefield,” said Jane, “if you don’t mind sharing them with me.”

  “Do you like jellies?” he asked her.

  “Oh, I love them. Back in Nantwich they were a great treat, you see. And when I was a girl I used to put the spoon up to my lips and inhale the jelly between my teeth, which always annoyed Great-grandmother Kent.”

  “That’s what I do, if Aunt Margaret isn’t watching.”

  “If I’m not watching what?” Unnoticed by everyone with the possible exception of the superhumanly eagle-eyed Bunch, Margaret had come to stand in the doorway, and now she took a few steps inside and stood frowning over at Wakefield.

  “Nothing,” muttered Wakefield, sulky again.

  Margaret turned to Jane. “As it’s getting dark, Miss Kent, I’ve had your carriage brought round to the front.”

  “She’s staying,” put in Wakefield.

  “You’re not to impose on Miss Kent any longer, Wakefield. I’m sure she has any number of duties awaiting her attention at the Hall, and that her family will be glad to have her home for dinner. Do try to stop being so selfish.”

  “I’m not selfish, you’re selfish!” Wakefield burst out, and Anthony immediately felt a hideous and depressing sense of déjà vu.

  “Wake,” he said, “calm down. And Meg, you might want to do the same. He’s a little feverish, and—”

  As if on cue, Mr. Rowland came into the room and looked around with gingery eyebrows raised.

  “Pardon me, Your Grace—you say that His Lordship has a fever?”

  “Yes, Mr. Rowland,” Jane said, “he is rather warm. Wakefield, you’re shivering. Won’t you get under the covers again?”

  “All right, Jane,” he replied, “I’m most awfully cold,” and he let Jane pull the bedclothes snugly up around him.

  Mr. Rowland went over to Wakefield and felt his forehead also. “Yes, you’re quite right, Miss Kent. It’s not unexpected, and people typically feel worse when evening comes on.”

  “He’ll need to be bled, obviously,” said Margaret. “I’ll send for Dr. Fotherham.”

  Wakefield shrank closer to Jane. “I won’t be bled! I need all my blood.”

  Mr. Rowland turned to Margaret. “You are, of course, welcome to send for your physician, Your Ladyship, and naturally I would be glad of his opinion. However, I strongly advise against bleeding, especially with a person so young.”

  “When I was a child,” said Margaret, fixing him with a steely gaze, “we were always bled when we had fevers. Dr. Fotherham’s predecessor was a great proponent of it, and my parents thought most highly of him.”

  Mr. Rowland merely gave a slight, pleasant, noncommittal bow, and Anthony said, trying to keep his voice equally neutral:

  “Meg, you know Dr. Fotherham doesn’t bleed people.”

  “What I know,” returned Margaret, turning her steely gaze his way, “is that you are shockingly indifferent to the welfare of your only child and heir.”

  Anthony stood up. “Now see here, Meg, that’s uncalled for.”

  “Father’s not undiffering!” cried Wakefield. “You’re undiffering! Go away, you—you old crow!”

  “Wake, that’s enough,” said Anthony, but Margaret had stiffened angrily.

  “Very well, I will.” She spun on her heel and marched out of the room, and Anthony, stricken with hideous déjà vu all over again, had to resist an urge to go over and slam the door behind her, just for dramatic effect. But he gathered himself and said:

  “Jane, would you like to write a note, and have it sent back to the Hall with your carriage?”

  Jane nodded, and he went on, “Bunch, send for Dr. Fotherham, please. I’d like for him to have a look at Wakefield. Jane and I will have our dinner in here. Have a table and chairs brought in, will you, along with Wake’s jellies, and some lemonade as well. At some point the dogs will need to be fed and taken out. Mr. Rowland, Bunch will see to your own dinner arrangements.”

  A small agreeable bustle ensued, and Anthony, sitting down again next to Wakefield and holding his warm and rather sweaty little hand in his, thought for a moment of black-clad Margaret eating her own dinner somewhere in the house all by herself, and found he could summon within himself not a single tiny scrap of pity.

  “I say, Jane, it’s most awfully good of you to stay the night.”

  “I don’t mind at all.”

  “Well, thank you again. Also, I feel that I should apologize.”

  “What for?”

  “First of all, for Margaret, for being so beastly. Second, for Wake’s kicking up a fuss and insisting you sleep in his room, and crying about not having dessert, and for being so—well—temperamental.”

  “Oh, it’s not his fault,” Jane said. “People naturally feel dreadful after an extraction, I think. Why, I remember how my great-grandmother Kent cried all day after one of hers. Which was shocking, as I had never, ever seen her cry before, not eve
n when my parents died. There’s something about losing a part of yourself, perhaps, and of course there’s a certain amount of violence to the whole thing which is miserable.”

  The Duke nodded, and together they gently veered to the left and paced along another length of the Hastings ballroom. Footmen had lit candles in just half a dozen or so of the many wall-sconces, and the enormous, high-ceilinged room was filled with a soft, dim, cozy glow. Overhead, the crystal drops in the great central chandelier twinkled ever so faintly with the reflected lights of the candles. It was rather magical, Jane thought. And how exceedingly marvelous to have a little time alone with the Duke. She supposed that Lady Margaret was off sulking somewhere, rather than attempting to play the chaperone’s role, and briefly Jane took a moment to wonder if either of her great-grandmothers would approve of the situation.

  Probably not.

  Jane, you’re a bad, bad girl, she said to herself, then mentally she gave a defiant shrug.

  Her behavior might not be ideal, but she herself wasn’t bad. For example, she wasn’t trying to sneakily trick the Duke into marrying her (as Lady Felicia had), and she wasn’t attempting to seduce someone against their will (like Viscount Whitton had), and she didn’t go about glowering icily at other people who were only trying to help a scared little boy (which Lady Margaret had done just this morning).

  No, she, Jane, was all right.

  And besides, it felt good to be walking.

  About two hours ago, Dr. Fotherham—stocky, grizzled, exuding an air of unflappable competence—had arrived, examined Wakefield, agreed with Mr. Rowland that some feverishness was not unexpected, vehemently spurned the very idea of bleeding (much to Wakefield’s relief), suggested a soothing saline draught if Wakefield felt like drinking it, asked to be sent for again if the fever did happen to worsen, and otherwise recommended further bed-rest until Wakefield’s usual energy returned.

  After that, dinner had been brought in, and also a trundle bed for later; the housekeeper had discreetly produced for her a warm nightgown and a flannel wrapper, and after they had eaten (and the Duke had been correct, the jellies were delicious), Bunch had come in to sit with Wakefield for a while so that she and the Duke could go stretch their legs.

  When they had left, Bunch was sitting in the chair next to Wakefield’s bed reading out loud from a volume of fairy tales, Wakefield having no taste for anything heavier at the moment, and Jane had secretly marveled at how Bunch performed this kind service with his usual self-assured, pleasant graciousness, as if it was something he did every day.

  So here she and the Duke were, walking round and round. He had adapted his long stride and she had slightly lengthened her own, so they kept pace together quite easily.

  They veered again to the left, passing a long row of chairs draped in Holland covers.

  Jane said, “This is such a beautiful room. When was the last time you had a dance in here?”

  “Oh, a couple of years ago. Margaret had a costume ball for yet another one of her so-called friends with a highly eligible daughter.”

  She gave him a sidelong glance. There were a lot of questions she wanted to ask, but she decided to go with a simple one. “What was your costume?”

  “I regret to say,” the Duke replied, “and more than I can properly express, that I allowed myself to be coerced into going as Augustus.”

  “Who?”

  “Augustus. The first emperor of the Roman Empire.”

  “Oh, I see. What did you wear?”

  “A toga.”

  “What is that?”

  “It’s a great long piece of cloth that one drapes all around and about oneself, and over a tunic. A horrible nuisance, really. Mine kept threatening to come undone, which made me look more like a fool than ever. A highly nervous fool.”

  “I’ll bet you looked quite dashing. You’re so tall and you have nice shoulders.”

  “They’re nice? Do you really think so, Jane?”

  “Oh yes. Was the ball a success?”

  “I suppose it depends on who you ask. The aforementioned young lady came as Marie Antoinette, wearing an extremely tall wig, and when she brushed up too close to one of the sconces, her wig caught on fire and so one of the other guests flung a pitcher of orgeat over her head to put it out, which worked, but it also made the floor very sticky. Three or four ladies lost their slippers walking over it, and seemed to feel their dignity suffered as a result. Also, someone came dressed as Ivan the Great, got very drunk, and started doing Russian squat-kicks. He knocked over at least two people that I know of, along with a side-table filled with champagne glasses, which made for quite the noisy mess. Several people,” the Duke added, “started clapping, and Marie Antoinette’s mother—who, if memory serves, was dressed as Cleopatra—went into hysterics and had to be carried to her room on an improvised stretcher.”

  “Is there more, or are these just the highlights?”

  “Well, it also rained so heavily that nobody could go wandering out back into the gardens. Although one couple did try when it briefly let up, and came across McTavish starting to cover the Aphrodite shrub, so that it wouldn’t shed too many leaves in the downpour. Apparently the chap made some kind of disparaging remark, and McTavish was so angry that he loosed upon them a Scottish curse.”

  “Dear me. Did you ever find out what the curse was?”

  “I did ask McTavish later, but he was still so furious that I quailed and slunk away, before he could loose a curse upon me. Besides, he was holding the most fearsome pair of shears.”

  Jane smiled. “So would you say the ball was a failure or a success?”

  “Margaret, of course, was livid about the whole thing, especially when her houseguests actually fled in the night, but as I managed to escape being wrangled into issuing a proposal, I’d call it an unabashed success. Do you really think my shoulders are nice?”

  “Yes, I do,” answered Jane, noticing that she was feeling very light and happy and floaty, as if her bones had gotten all deliciously hollow, and also that she really wasn’t the least bit guilty about being alone with the Duke and making intimate personal remarks about his appearance—specifically his lovely, lovely shoulders.

  The Duke said: “They’re not as big and wide as Viscount Whitton’s.”

  “No. But that doesn’t mean his are better, you know.”

  “Quite a fine-looking fellow, though, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose some people might find him so.”

  “Did you, Jane?”

  Jane looked up at the Duke. Both his voice and his expression were very earnest. Together the two of them veered again to the left. “Not especially.”

  “Really? It’s just that—well, I noticed that he seemed to stare at you quite a bit, and you talked to him for ages at the dinner-party, and also, that night of the dance, I saw you coming out of the billiards room, and then he followed right behind you—I say, am I being infuriating again?”

  He spoke so humbly that Jane was touched. “No.”

  “Well, that’s good. Do you mind—do you mind if I ask again? If he was kissing you? It’s been rather torturing me.”

  “No, he didn’t kiss me. He tried to, though.”

  “But you said he wasn’t bothering you.”

  “Oh, he wasn’t. First I told him no, and when he didn’t listen, I simply brought my knee up, you know, to a rather vulnerable area of his, and that helped to make my point.”

  “Jane,” said the Duke, in a tone of deepest respect.

  “Your Grace.”

  “Did you really?”

  “Yes.”

  “By Jove, that’s capital.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That explains why he was walking so oddly the next day.”

  “I daresay it does.”

  “I’m sorry to say that I snickered behind his back.”

  “I would have, too.”

  “Would you, Jane?”

  “Yes. He deserved it.”

  “May
be so. Weren’t you frightened when he came at you, though? He has all those muscles.”

  “Oh no, it was rather amusing. He was rather amusing. Didn’t you think so?”

  “You found him amusing?”

  “Yes indeed. Because he thought so much of himself. And wasn’t it funny, the way he hung about so morosely, and made it seem as if his eyes were aflame?”

  “I tried to do that,” confessed the Duke.

  “Tried to do what?”

  “To make my eyes do that.”

  “And did you?”

  “No, apparently not. I just looked demented.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t worry about it,” Jane said. “I like the way your eyes darken sometimes.”

  “Do they?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you like the way they look when they do that?”

  “Oh yes. Also, they’re a lovely deep shade of blue.” They veered again, passing another long row of covered chairs.

  “That’s such a nice thing to say. I like your eyes, too.”

  The Duke said this so shyly and humbly that Jane slipped her arm through his. “Thank you. Your Grace.”

  There was a silence, tempered only and in a very pleasing way by the regular cadence of their matching footsteps. After a while, the Duke said:

  “I say, this feels very companionable.”

  “Walking arm-in-arm?”

  “Yes. I wanted to,” he added, “but I didn’t know if you would also.”

  “You could have asked.”

  “I was afraid you might still be angry with me.”

  “Did I seem that way?” Jane said, surprised.

  “No, not at all. But I did wonder.”

  “Well, I was upset with you that night. I’m sorry if I snarled at you.”

  “There’s no need to apologize. I was being a sapskull, as, I fear, I all too often am. But why did you say I ought to be worrying about myself?”

  Jane considered how to thoughtfully and judiciously answer him without betraying Lady Felicia’s confidence, though she was noticing that her brain seemed to be moving a little more slowly now that she was in physical contact with the Duke. It was an extremely nice sensation, and she could practically feel her blood, rushing eagerly through her veins, heating up, possibly even coming to a nice vigorous boil, sending delicious mind-dissolving tingles everywhere. She nearly started to purr, then caught herself just in time.