by Grace Burrowes, Shana Galen, Miranda Neville, Carolyn Jewel
“Which he must have acquired from you,” Hardcastle concluded. “I certainly haven’t spent enough time around the boy to be much of an influence.”
Not something to be proud of. He and Christopher were the last surviving Hardcastle males, after all.
“Christopher will recall today fondly,” Miss MacHugh said, patting Hardcastle’s hand. She’d done that once before, in the garden by the fountain. Very few people presumed to touch a duke, and yet, when Miss MacHugh took liberties, she was relaxed and confident about it.
“You will recall today less than fondly,” Hardcastle observed. “I had no idea how tedious traveling with a small child could be.”
Miss MacHugh twitched the blanket up over Christopher’s shoulders. The boy had to be exhausted to be sleeping so soundly, but then, children did sleep soundly, while dukes rarely did.
“You will recall today miserably,” she said, settling back. “If I’d been asked to describe your complexion, sir, I would have started with green, followed up with bilious, and concluded with shroudly pale.”
Shroudly wasn’t a word, suggesting the governess was teasing the duke.
“Why thank you, Miss MacHugh.” Had she suggested Christopher’s nap out of consideration for her employer? “If I had to describe the color of your lips, I’d say they were the vermilion glory of sunset at the end of a beautiful summer day spent in the company of good friends whom one has longed to see for ages. They bear the rosy tint of the tender mallow flowers at the height of their bloom, the fresh hue of ripe strawberries glistening with morning dew, and the tantalizing delicacy of raspberries nestled in their thorny, green hedges.”
Those vermilion, rosy, strawberry, raspberry lips curved up. “Very good, Your Grace. I know where Christopher gets his aptitude for the game. Very good indeed.”
She didn’t pat his hand again.
Well.
Hardcastle put an arm around the lady’s shoulders to steady her against the jostle and sway of the coach.
“Rest your eyes, Miss MacHugh. We’ve miles to go before we reach an inn up to my standards of accommodation, and the boy will waken all too soon.”
She startled minutely at Hardcastle’s forwardness, a reaction he detected only because they were in close proximity. An instant later, she eased against his side, tentatively, then more heavily as sleep claimed her. Hardcastle’s belly had quieted entirely, and his headache had departed, but his mind went at a dead gallop down a muddy road indeed.
He did not want to go duchess hunting amid the great houses of the Dukeries, neither did he want to allow Ellen MacHugh to leave his household. He was a duke, however, and those wretches were doomed to a lifetime of marching out smartly, intent on accomplishing tasks they truly did not care to complete.
Hardcastle was damned sick and tired of being a good duke. Perhaps the naughty boy in him should be allowed some long overdue attention.
Only as sleep stole over his mind did Hardcastle admit to himself that he would always strive to be a good duke, and Ellen MacHugh would have little interest in a naughty boy—but perhaps she’d spare a lonely man a bit of company, under the right circumstances.
Chapter Two
‡
“Uncle likes you,” Christopher said, passing his pencil to Ellen for a sharper one.
“I respect His Grace greatly,” Ellen replied, accepting the dull pencil and passing over a fresh one. Something in Christopher’s observation was not entirely innocent. He was six, and children at his age matured rapidly and in unexpected directions.
“No, I mean Uncle likes you,” Christopher said again.
They’d settled in at Sedgemere House late the previous night, among the last of the guests to arrive.
After being confined in the coach for three eternities—one of them with His Grace—Ellen was happy to be out of doors, sketching on a blanket in the Duke of Sedgemere’s sunken garden. The morning was spectacularly beautiful, and the governess responsible for Sedgemere’s three boys had suggested this quiet retreat.
“I like His Grace as well,” Ellen said, fishing a penknife from the sketching box and getting to work on the pencil.
She did not like Hardcastle. Her situation was worse than that. She could have liked him and was only now realizing it. He cared for Christopher mightily, had a sense of humor, was kind in a gruff avuncular fashion, and was…
Lonely. That insight had devastated her.
Hardcastle had tucked his arm around her as if daring her to protest, and she should have, but hadn’t been able to. He knew exactly how to wrap a woman in his embrace, so she was protected without being confined, and without implying the least impropriety.
Ellen had slept deeply against his side and awoken feeling safe, warm, and content—also resentful, for the duke had offered her a comfort she would not know again.
He couldn’t understand that, of course. When Ellen had touched Hardcastle, he’d looked a little bewildered, as if a hummingbird or a butterfly had lit on his sleeve. He couldn’t know that his touch, so casually offered, bewildered her the same way.
“Uncle kissed you,” Christopher said, his tongue peeking out of the side of his mouth. “When we were in the coach.”
The penknife slipped, and Ellen came within a whisker of cutting herself.
“Christopher, you must not say such things. His Grace conducted himself with utmost propriety at all times, given the situation.”
Christopher looked up from the owl he was drawing. In the fashion of small boys, he was fascinated with owls lately, a welcome change from the frogs and toads of earlier in the summer.
“You say I mustn’t tell lies,” he replied. “Uncle kissed your hair. That’s not a lie. You were asleep and I was too, mostly, but I opened my eyes and saw him. He kissed your hair. You kiss my hair sometimes.”
The child was asking a question Ellen hardly knew how to answer. “Lies always get us in trouble, but in this case, the truth could also get the duke in trouble. If he kissed my hair, I’m sure it was simply the same sort of gesture of affection as I’ve shown you. Or perhaps my hair was tickling his nose.”
The truth if misconstrued could get Ellen ruined—again. A woman permitting her employer’s kisses while a child looked on was a sorry creature.
Ellen would rather have been an awake sorry creature, though.
“I won’t say anything,” Christopher allowed, getting to work on the complicated task of drawing feathers on his owl. “Uncle is very dignified. Unless you want me to tell him not to do it again?”
The offer was so gentlemanly, tears threatened.
Ellen put the penknife back in the box, the pencil being adequately sharpened. “What would you say to him, Christopher?”
“I’d say to him that when a gentleman likes a lady, he should tell her that, so she knows, not sneak kisses to her hair. Ladies like fellows who are honest. You say that.”
“I’m a font of useful notions. That is a very handsome owl, Christopher.” A very knowing sort of owl.
“His names is Xerxes. I wish I had a real owl.”
“When you are grown, you can have a mews, a real mews, with falcons in it.” Ellen would not see him learn to fly his falcons, though. The realization nearly had her weeping outright.
Why had she allowed herself to grow so attached to this boy? Not well done of her at all.
“Who’s that lady?” Christopher asked, sitting up. “She looks worried.”
No less a personage than their hostess, the Duchess of Sedgemere was crossing the grass. She was a pretty woman perhaps five years Ellen’s senior. The same governess who’d told Ellen about the sunken garden had confided that Her Grace had been the daughter of a banker and was quite approachable when the Quality weren’t looking.
“Good morning, Your Grace,” Ellen said, rising to curtsey. Beside her, Christopher scrambled to his feet and bowed.
“Miss MacHugh, good day, and hello to you, young sir. Christopher, isn’t it? May I borrow your governess for a
moment?”
Ellen’s first thought was that the duchess had somehow learned of the kiss in the traveling coach and had come to see Ellen escorted to the foot of the drive, bag and baggage. Hardcastle would never have allowed that—if he’d kissed her—and as Christopher had noted, the duchess looked a trifle anxious.
“May I be of assistance, Your Grace?” Ellen asked.
“Let’s admire the dratted roses, shall we?” Her Grace suggested, moving briskly along the crushed-shell walk, while Christopher went blithely back to feathering his owl. “Sedgemere’s gardener was in a taking because the roses were blooming too early. Imagine the effrontery of roses blooming on their own schedule. I’m babbling.”
Ellen liked this woman already. “You’re worried about something.”
“I’m almost too tired to worry, Miss MacHugh. I’m not very good at this duchessing business. Think of me what you will, but I need your help.”
The roses were passing their prime, alas, though a few late bloomers were yet in bud. “What can I do to help, Your Grace?”
“Lady Amelia Marchman has decided not to attend my gathering. It’s my first house party as the Duchess of Sedgemere, and she has one scheduled for later this summer. I do believe she’s trying to sabotage my Come Out, so to speak, by making the numbers on my roster uneven.”
“Ah.” The warfare of women. Ellen had skirmished on these fields at finishing school, and her aunt had attempted to equip her for the greater battles to come during a London social Season.
“Miss MacHugh, I am in danger of becoming silly,” the duchess went on, “and His Grace is nearly out of patience with me. I don’t know many women whose consequence would make them appropriate guests at a duke’s house party, and I certainly can’t call on the few I do know to cover Lady Amelia’s defection. I will become the first duchess in the history of duchesses to hold a house party at which the numbers do not balance.”
Ellen sank onto a bench, because this request—did a duchess issue requests?—was enormous.
“You might dissuade one of the gentlemen from attending,” Ellen suggested as the duchess took a seat beside her. The bench faced a small pond, in which a half-dozen serene white ducks drifted on the water.
“Brilliant notion, Miss MacHugh, but His Grace refused to countenance it. These are his school chums, his cronies from the House of Lords or their sons and younger brothers. They’ve already started placing bets on the Dukeries Cup race, which event is the main reason the men were willing to come. Some guests will decamp early, when they’ve played too deeply or grown bored, but I must at least start with an even number of ladies and gentlemen on the roster I circulate before dinner.”
Such was friendship among the aristocracy that one could not ask for a favor?
“I hardly have suitable attire, Your Grace.” Ellen had the manners though, as well as the French, the literature, the pianoforte. Mama and Papa had had high hopes for her, despite the costs.
“I’ve inquired of my housekeeper, Mrs. Bolkers, who knows everybody in the Midlands. She claims you come from an old Derbyshire family, and your uncle is an earl,” the duchess replied. “I asked Hardcastle after breakfast this morning, and he left it up to you: If you’d like to be a guest at the house party, then he won’t object. Nobody saw you arrive last night because you came in so late, and my sons’ governess can easily handle one more little fellow.”
If Hardcastle had already capitulated, there went Ellen’s last, best defense against this folly.
“I should refuse you, Your Grace. Ellen MacHugh left Derbyshire under a cloud of gossip, and now she turns up five years later at your house party?”
Her Grace was not classically beautiful. Her hair was dark rather than fair, her features dramatic rather than pretty. She gazed out across the pond, just as the lead duck tipped down into the water, his tail pointing skyward. Several other ducks followed suit. The prospect was utterly undignified, but thus did ducks find sustenance.
“I’ll be the duchess who returns you to the place in society you should never have abandoned,” Her Grace said. “Don’t steal a fellow from any of the other young ladies, don’t be too witty, don’t drink too much, and if you can manage to plead a headache for half the waltzes, we’ll both get through this, Miss MacHugh. I will be ever in your debt, and you might even enjoy yourself.”
Oh, right. Moving in society—even rural society—had gone so well the last time Ellen had attempted it.
“Are you enjoying yourself, Your Grace?”
“Endlessly, Miss MacHugh. Was the gossip serious?”
“I was seen kissing a fellow I was not engaged to.” A lie, but such an old, necessary lie that it no longer felt like one.
“What a shameless wanton you are. I was seen kissing a duke I was not engaged to, and look what a miserable fate has befallen me. Let’s get you upstairs, then. I have enough clothes for eighteen women, though my gowns will at least need to be hemmed if they’re to fit you.”
The duchess rose, while across the garden Christopher had taken to watching the ducks.
“I must report my decision to Hardcastle,” Ellen said, “and gain his permission to entrust Christopher to your staff.”
“Stroll with him after luncheon then. No fewer than five young ladies were eyeing him at breakfast as if they’d love to end up accidentally napping in his bed. His Grace is in for a long two weeks, as am I.”
One of those young ladies would likely conclude the gathering as a prospective duchess.
“I’m in for a long two weeks as well, ma’am. A very long two weeks.”
*
“This house party was the most confoundedly inane notion my grandmother ever bludgeoned me into,” Hardcastle muttered. “Now you tell me your uncle is an earl? Will I next learn the Regent has abdicated and winged hedgehogs grace the skies of Nottinghamshire?”
Hardcastle hadn’t adjusted to the notion of Miss MacHugh leaving his employ, and now he was to accept that she was niece to the Earl of Dalton?
“I did not want to embarrass my family by my decision to go into service,” Miss MacHugh said. “I had already embarrassed them enough, you see, so I took a position in Cornwall.”
No, Hardcastle did not see.
Beneath the window of the duchess’s sitting room, on a back terrace festooned with potted salvia, sat a small regiment of beauties who were little more than half Hardcastle’s age. Each one was possessed of a devious mind and a large settlement, and collectively, they were plotting his downfall. They’d formed ranks at breakfast and had spent the morning going at him, like French cavalry charging a British infantry square.
Sooner or later, his lines would break, and he’d be compromised into taking a duchess not of his choosing.
In Kent, the idea of acquiring a duchess had seemed inevitably sensible. Somewhere on the Great North Road, that scheme had become anathema, while another idea—a daft, delightful idea—had taken its place.
Hardcastle quit the window before one of the enemy generals spotted him. “Explain this embarrassment you caused your family, madam. Have I harbored a bad influence in my nursery?”
A damned attractive bad influence, at that. In borrowed deep green finery, Ellen MacHugh’s figure showed to excellent advantage, and her complexion was perfection itself. Her hair was severely contained, for now, and the result was feminine elegance of an order Hardcastle was not accustomed to withstanding.
“You have harbored an innocent young lady who allowed a man to kiss her,” she replied. “That young lady was seen by idle gossips, which might have been the young man’s intention. I left rather than let the talk grow. Nothing more, Your Grace.”
With that degree of composure, she’d be a terror at the card tables. Nobody would be able to predict when she was bluffing.
“You’re pretty,” Hardcastle said, stepping closer. “Damned pretty.”
Miss MacHugh smoothed a hand over silk skirts. “Should I apologize for that transgression, Your Grace?”
> “You’ll regret it,” he said, trying not to stare at the simple gold locket nestled just above her breasts. “For every female pursuing me, two fellows will pursue you, and men cannot be relied upon to behave honorably, as you already know.”
Hardcastle could endure the simpering females, but the notion that the strutting cocks and squealing stud colts would be sniffing around Ellen MacHugh—his Ellen—was unsupportable.
“I am to be the duchess’s personal guest,” she replied. “The gentlemen will behave themselves.”
Worse and worse. “My dear Miss MacGoverness, the duchess herself is on trial here. This is her maiden attempt at managing a major gathering, and the other women will sabotage her personal guest’s reception by sundown. I’ve met these women, and they’re enough to give me an ague starting immediately.”
For the first time, Miss MacHugh looked uncertain. “I told the duchess this would not work.”
Hardcastle put his hands behind his back rather than find out for himself if the gold of Ellen’s locket was warm from her body heat.
Perhaps he was suffering from an ague in truth. “Duchesses are formidable women and difficult to gainsay,” he allowed. “I have a suggestion.”
Miss MacHugh touched the locket, reminding him that he’d seen her do that before, at Sunday services when the weather was temperate.
“I will not like this suggestion, sir.”
“You’ll loathe it less than you’d loathe being mashed up against the wall of the linen closet when young Mr. Greenover takes a notion to acquaint you with his charms. I’ve yet to see him sober, but he’s in line for an earldom and already controls a large fortune. Perhaps you’d like him to propose?”
She appeared disgusted, bless her. “When this house party has concluded, I will return to my family in Derbyshire.”
Well, damn. If she’d been leaving him for another post, he could simply have raised her salary. Returning to the loving arms of the family daft enough to allow her into service posed a conundrum, for what could compete with family?