by Grace Burrowes, Shana Galen, Miranda Neville, Carolyn Jewel
In other words, Christopher was trying to be good.
“Christopher, greetings,” said the duke, striding along the crushed-shell walk. “Shouldn’t you be at your studies?”
Christopher shot Ellen a look, a plea for intervention. Soon enough, she would be unable to intercede for the boy. Perhaps the new duchess would be kind, though. Ellen could hope for that.
“We are at our lessons, Your Grace,” Ellen said. “What better place to learn botany than in a garden?”
The duke treated her to one of those reserved, slightly annoyed perusals, as if from one day to the next, he forgot who Ellen was and how she’d come to be in his household.
“Miss MacHugh, good day.”
“We’re taking a walk,” Christopher said, making a grab for the duke’s glove, but stopping short and tucking his own little hand behind his back, much as his uncle often did. “I’m counting bugs, and Miss MacHugh was explaining about thorns.”
“Who better to discourse on the topic of thorns? Perhaps I’ll walk with you.”
Christopher was so enthralled with this prospect, he spun in a circle. “Please, sir! I know lots of flowers, and birds, and how each bird sings differently so his friends and family will hear him. I know I must never, ever, ever touch the laburnum, anywhere, and don’t let anybody or anything eat any part of it.”
“My garden is apparently full of hazards,” Hardcastle remarked.
Was the duke waiting for Ellen to invite him to join them? And why was he going on about thorns and hazards?
“Your garden is beautiful, sir,” Ellen said. “Please share it with us.”
He stared at the laburnum as if it too, were some sort of interloper he didn’t recall hiring. “I knew the laburnum was poisonous. I got the same lectures as a boy Christopher did, but I’d forgotten.”
The duke winged his arm, a courtesy he’d rarely shown Ellen before. She took it, because that was what a lady did when a gentleman was on his manners.
“Many other plants are equally dangerous,” she said, “but we admire them, carefully, for their beauty or other properties. Then there’s foxglove, which can help at the proper dose and kill at an improper one.”
“You are not a governess,” Hardcastle said. “You are a professor in disguise. How am I to replace you?”
“Please don’t wheedle, Your Grace. My nerves couldn’t bear it.”
“Nor mine, alas,” he said, in perfect seriousness.
Christopher had galloped off toward the heartsease, which enjoyed a shady bed near the fountain. Even in high summer, they were doing well, for temperatures in recent weeks had remained moderate.
“I have a rehearsed apology,” the duke said, leading Ellen to a wooden bench. “I can’t seem to recall it now that the moment to recite has presented itself. I planned to summon you to the library so I could express my remorse for our last conversation.”
“No such expression is needed, Your Grace.” Though even for him, he’d been high-handed—or nervous? “I will leave my post at the end of this house party, nonetheless. I suggest you explain the situation to Christopher so he’ll have time to adjust.”
“He won’t adjust,” Hardcastle said, taking off his gloves and using them to bat imaginary dust from the bench. “Will you sit with me, Miss MacHugh?”
Ellen wanted to refuse Hardcastle, for the simple, contrary novelty of thwarting him, but also because a duke in an apologetic mood upset the balance between them. She was not, however, a recalcitrant schoolgirl overdue for an outing, so she took a seat.
“I was seven when my parents died,” Hardcastle said, coming down beside Ellen, and stuffing his gloves in a pocket. “My grandfather had been traveling on the Continent, and it took him some months to return to England. He came swooping into our lives like the wrath of King George, and nothing was ever the same.”
“Losing our loved ones is hard.” Losing just this pretty, peaceful garden would break Ellen’s heart.
“I was managing,” Hardcastle said, “as was Lord Robin, mostly because we had a fine governess. Miss Henckel maintained order and routine for us, let us have our tantrums and sulks as we adjusted to the loss of our parents. She knew when to discipline and when to look the other way. Miss Henckel alone took on the burden of explaining to us what was afoot when Papa’s coach overturned. I was… attached to her.”
Ellen suspected the duke’s disclosure was a revelation even to him, but she couldn’t afford to waver.
“Not fair, Your Grace. Christopher’s parents died three years ago, and he’s a happy little boy. He has the staff wrapped around his finger, he has every comfort, and you will not make me responsible for his happiness and well-being. He has you for that.”
“I hardly know the boy.”
His Grace regretted this state of affairs, apparently, but for the first time, Ellen realized why the duke had kept his distance from Christopher, another orphan thrust into the role of ducal heir at a tender age.
“What happened to Miss Henckel?” Ellen asked.
“She was replaced with tutors, of course, and then public school and university. Grandfather and the trustees he chose for me did not believe in coddling a ducal heir.”
“I’m sorry,” Ellen said, though offering condolences to Hardcastle was an odd turn in their dealings. “The one adult you loved should not have been taken from you when the rest of your life was in chaos. Christopher’s life is not in chaos.”
At the other end of the fountain, Christopher experimented with passing a stick through the spray and momentarily re-directing the flow of the water. A green maple leaf came drifting down to land on the duke’s muscular thigh, a bright contrast to his fawn riding breeches.
He took the leaf in his fingers, twirling it by the stem. “I was fond of Miss Henckel. In any case, I acknowledge that you have the right to abandon your post with proper notice. I do not like it, but I could have turned you off without a character at any point, and you would not have liked that.”
“Your Grace is a scrupulously fair man,” Ellen said. “You would not have treated me thus.” He wouldn’t treat anybody with such disregard for common decency, though his version of the civilities and fair play was frosty, at best.
“I want to treat you badly,” he said, tossing the leaf into the fountain. “I’m quite wroth with you, madam.” He didn’t sound angry. He sounded rueful, like a small boy who must abandon the garden for his French lessons.
In the quiet end of the fountain’s pool, the leaf spun slowly this way and that as the breezes and currents shifted.
“We have, from time to time, been out of charity with each other,” Ellen said. “I’m sure we’ll muddle through this as well. I’ll help look for a replacement.” She could not say more, not with the boy at the other end of the fountain.
She patted the duke’s hand—his bare hand—and abruptly was hit with a faint, cool mist across her cheek.
“Sorry!” Christopher bellowed, chortling merrily. “I’m trying to water the flowers!”
“Trying to get a birching,” the duke muttered, rising and extending a hand to Ellen. “He’s nearly as bad as I was at his age. Have I apologized for my brusque demeanor adequately, Miss MacHugh?”
He’d explained more than apologized, but the explanation was the greater gift. Ellen put her hand in his.
“Your apology is accepted, sir.”
He stood for a moment peering down at her, their hands joined. They hadn’t touched like this before, bare-handed, casually. Or rather, Ellen hadn’t touched His Grace. Had he been waiting for that overture before presuming himself?
“My objective is accomplished then. Find a way to accidentally knock the boy into the fountain. He’ll love you for it.” The duke bowed and marched off through the laburnum alley, while Christopher shrieked something about having found a great, brown warty toad.
*
Pride, even ducal pride, could carry a man only so far.
Hardcastle’s pride had carried him three
miles beyond the coaching inn, three miles of wet verge, muddy road, and relentless rain. Three miles of cold trickling down the back of his neck no matter the angle of his sodden top hat and no matter how many times he adjusted the collar of his great coat.
Ajax bore it all stoically—he was the personal mount of a duke, after all—but when thunder rumbled to the north, and lightning joined the affray, Ajax’s equine dignity threatened to desert him.
Hardcastle signaled John Coachman to pull up, tied Ajax to the back of the coach, and climbed inside.
“Uncle! We’re playing the color game. You’re very wet!”
“Miss MacHugh, your charge is a prodigy.” Where did one sit when one was a large, sodden duke who reeked of wet horse, muddy boots, and disgust with this entire outing? Hardcastle shrugged out of his great coat and hung it on a peg on the back of the coach door.
“Christopher is a bright boy, Your Grace,” her governess-ship replied. “I tell him that frequently.”
Miss MacHugh sat on the forward-facing seat beside Christopher, both of them dry and cozy, the boy having the audacity to smile.
Nothing for it then.
A gentleman did not drip indiscriminately on a lady or on a child. Hardcastle took the backward-facing seat and silently cursed all house parties.
“My grandmother will answer for this,” he muttered, taking off his hat and getting a brimful of frigid rain water across his lap for his efforts. “If it’s not the blazing heat, the flies and the dust, it’s the mud, the rain, and the cold.”
“I’m not cold,” Christopher said. “Would you like to play our game with us, sir?”
Hardcastle would rather have throttled his dear grandmama. “A duke, as a rule, hasn’t time for games.”
The child’s face fell, which was durance vile for the uncle sitting across from him. Christopher wasn’t to blame for the weather, or for the queasiness that had already begun to plague Hardcastle. Worse, Miss MacHugh’s expression had gone carefully blank, as if once again, Mr. Higginbotham had arrived at Sunday services tipsy.
Farmer Higginbotham was probably still tipsy on a Wednesday afternoon, also warm and dry by his own hearth.
“I find,” Hardcastle said, “that the luxury of time has been afforded me by the foul weather, the execrable roads, and the boon of present company. What is this color game?’
“Does that mean he’ll play?” the boy asked his governess.
“Not everybody has the skill to play the color game, Christopher,” Miss MacHugh said, brushing her hand over the child’s golden curls. “We’ve had plenty of practice, while His Grace will be a complete beginner.”
“You are no great respecter of dukes, are you, Miss MacHugh?” Hardcastle asked.
“I respect you greatly, sir, but the color game requires imagination and quickness, and Christopher is very good at it.”
“Alas, then I am doomed to defeat, being a slow, dull fellow. How does one play this game?”
The coach swayed and jostled along, Hardcastle’s belly rebelled strenuously against traveling on a backward-facing bench, and across from him, governess and prodigy exchanged a smile that was diabolically sweet. For a moment, they were a single entity of impish glee, delighted with each other and their circumstances.
For that same moment, Hardcastle forgot he was cold, wet, and queasy, and nearly forgot he was a duke.
“It’s simple, sir,” Christopher said. “One person picks out an object, then we take turns naming as many colors as we can that describe the object. The person with the most colors wins. I’ll give you an example,” the boy went on, his manner as patient and thorough as any duke’s. “Your breeches are brown, gray near your boots, and buckskin. Also… sort of umbrage where the mud has splashed on them.”
“Umber,” Miss MacHugh corrected gently—smirkingly. “Umbrage refers to indignation. Umber is a rusty, sienna, orange-y dark brown.”
“The game seems simple enough,” Hardcastle said. Also tedious and pointless, but not entirely without possibilities. “Let’s describe the colors in Miss MacHugh’s hair.”
“Keen!” Christopher chortled. “Miss MacHugh’s hair is ever so pretty, but she’s wearing her bonnet.”
“She might be willing to part with her bonnet,” the duke replied, stretching out his legs and taking care not to let his boots come near her pristine hems. “For the sake of my education regarding the pressing topic of colors, of course.”
Sitting backward did not agree with Hardcastle, being damp and cold did not agree with him. Ruffling Miss MacHugh’s feathers was unworthy of him, but agreed with him rather well.
“The difficulty,” Miss MacHugh said, “is that I cannot assess my own hair as thoroughly as the other players in the game. I will oblige by removing my bonnet, but cannot participate in this round.”
She managed to get her bonnet off without disturbing a single tidy hair on her head, then looked about for a place to stash her millinery. Hardcastle took the hat from her and put it on the seat beside him. A hopelessly plain, straw bonnet, but also a prize surrendered into his keeping.
“I’ll go first,” Christopher offered, turning a serious expression to his governess. “This is a good opening round, sir.”
Miss MacHugh smoothed a hand over her skirts. No rings, not even a touch of lace at her cuffs, and yet she did have very pretty hair. Casual observation would call it red, and thick, and plagued by an unladylike tendency to wave and shine.
Hardcastle put a hand over his belly, for the horses were managing a good pace, despite the ruts, and his digestion was suffering accordingly.
“I’d say Miss MacHugh’s hair is auburn,” Christopher announced, “but I don’t know the words for the colors the coach lamps put in it. Fire-colored and the color of laughter.”
“Thank you, Christopher,” Miss MacHugh said, beaming at the boy. “You pay me such compliments, my bonnet will never fit on my head again.”
They shared another moment of complete accord, while the ale and cheese Hardcastle had partaken of miles ago intruded on his awareness most disagreeably.
“Miss MacHugh’s hair is auburn,” he said, “also red, russet, gold, blond, and sienna and the color of having the right answers even when not asked for them.”
Christopher’s brows twitched down. “You’ve won, sir. I’d forgot sienna even when Miss reminded me of it. We must play again, or it’s not sporting of you.”
What did a six-year-old know of sporting behavior? Miss MacHugh’s arched eyebrow—Titian, with a hint of amused chastisement—suggested Christopher knew a good deal.
“Very well,” Hardcastle said. “My turn to choose, and in the spirit of the opening round, I choose Miss MacHugh’s lips.”
“You must go first because you won the description of her hair,” Christopher said, as earnestly as if the rules of fair play had been devised by Wellington and Napoleon on the eve of Waterloo. The child was very dear in his good sportsmanship. Hardcastle peeled off his damp gloves and tousled Christopher’s hair.
“I have set myself up for failure,” the duke said. “For I gaze upon the challenge before me, and all I can think is Miss MacHugh’s lips are… pinkish.”
“They are pinkish,” Christopher allowed, “but if they’re pinkish, they’re also reddish, and maybe with a hint of… well, pinkish and reddish. Do I win?”
Hardcastle made a production of studying Miss MacHugh, who bore his scrutiny with patient indifference. By the light of the coach lamps, he could not quite count her freckles, thank heavens, but he could admire the clean line of her jaw, follow the swoop of dark brows, and mentally trace the shape of a mouth more full than ought to grace a governess’s physiognomy.
“I concede, Christopher,” Hardcastle said. “My descriptions are apparently in want of color. Shall you play the next round, Miss MacHugh?”
Fourteen thousand rounds later—Hardcastle’s muddy boots, Christopher’s storybook, Miss MacHugh’s beaded reticule—Christopher was yawning hugely and the duke w
as ready to cast up his accounts. The prospect of riding Ajax in the continuing downpour guaranteed an ague, but that was preferable to a loss of dignity.
“Perhaps I’ll ride a few more miles,” Hardcastle said, peering out the window at a sopping, green expanse of central England. “Or perhaps we should put up at the next coaching inn, rather than risk the horses in this mud.”
His teams were prime cattle, and they’d negotiate any footing handily. His bellyache had been joined by a throbbing head, though.
“Christopher, time to rest your eyes,” Miss MacHugh said. “We must ask His Grace to switch seats with you, so you can stretch out on the cushions.”
“The boy can sleep in the coach?”
“So I arrive fresh and on my manners,” Christopher explained, extricating himself from Miss MacHugh’s side. “Miss sometimes rests her eyes too.”
The child pulled off his boots as if napping in the coach was simply part of his routine.
Hardcastle shifted to the forward-facing seat, and immediately his head thanked him and his belly quit threatening outright rebellion.
Miss MacHugh folded the opposite bench out, so the boy had the width of a trundle bed to sleep on—they were in a ducal traveling coach, after all—but this left not as much room for Hardcastle’s legs.
“I don’t bite, Your Grace,” Miss MacHugh said, when she’d tucked a wool blanket around Christopher and settled back on the forward-facing seat. “Conditions in even your coach will be crowded when three of us are in here.”
“Quite.”
Hardcastle abruptly had nowhere to put his arms, his legs, his muddy boots, his anything. He wasn’t facing backward, but tumult of another variety assaulted him. He smelled of wet horse, even miles later, while Miss MacHugh smelled of… governess. Lilacs and lavender, sunny gardens, and… happy memories.
They rocked along for another mile, the child falling into a relaxed slumber. The movement of the coach swayed him gently amid the blankets, while Hardcastle felt his own eyes growing heavy.
“You were very kind to let Christopher win half the rounds,” Miss MacHugh said, nudging her bonnet way from the boy’s feet. “He’s sensitive and wants badly to have your approval, though he also has an excellent appreciation for sportsmanship.”