by Grace Burrowes, Shana Galen, Miranda Neville, Carolyn Jewel
“Ellen, why won’t you marry me?”
The question had cost him. Ellen was bundled in close, holding on to Hardcastle for dear life, and she could feel the pride and bewilderment in him.
“My family needs me,” she said, which was true. “My parents are getting on, Christopher is ready for more rigorous instruction, and it’s time. You must simply learn to avoid house parties, Your Grace.”
His chin rested on her crown, so perfectly did they fit together.
“How would I have managed these past days without you, Ellen? You stayed with the Pendleton creature when she claimed to have turned her ankle. You put Greenover up to dancing with that forward redhead when she forged my name on her dance card. You sat next to me in every parlor where I might have found myself with a lapful of swooning debutante but for your vigilance.”
This was the problem, right here. Hardcastle needed a duchess, any duchess, if he was to be spared more weeks of dodging and ducking his fate. Gratitude was not love, though, and passion was not love.
“You will enjoy this tour of the ducal neighbors,” Ellen said. “Christopher will miss you.”
“I ordered him to keep a close eye on you in my absence. He’s having entirely too much fun with Sedgemere’s ruffians, though.”
All the more proof that Ellen was no longer needed in the ducal household. “I’ll walk you to the stables, Your Grace.”
He accepted that decision with ominous quiet and resumed their progress across the gardens.
“You will be here when I return, Ellen? No disappearing into the wilds of the Peak District, never to be seen again?”
“Not yet. That part comes at the end of the week, sir.”
“The duchess in you allows you this calm. I wouldn’t mind if you fell weeping on my neck, you know.”
“You’re welcome to fall weeping on mine, sir. I don’t recommend it, though. Composure, like a reputation, is not easily regained once lost.”
“More duchess-ing. Don’t abandon me, Ellen. Be here when I return.”
His Grace was, in his imperious and dear way, pleading.
They reached the stables, where the duke’s horse stood patiently by a groom at the mounting block, and abruptly Ellen did want to fall weeping on Hardcastle’s neck.
On his boots, even.
“I’ll take the horse,” the duke said to the groom, giving the girth a stout tug. When Ellen expected Hardcastle to swing into the saddle, he instead took Ellen by the hand and led the gelding off toward an enormous oak across the lane from the stable yard. “Madam, a moment of your time.”
Ellen would never be able to refuse him anything, and grief made her reckless. “Hardcastle, perhaps it would be better if you didn’t return before I leave.”
“I see.”
“What do you think you see?”
“I see that you are as stubborn as a duchess too. How many times must I propose to you? Your physical affection for my person has been evidenced convincingly, though on damnably few occasions. I don’t think you object to my morals or even to my station. What deficiency must I address to win your hand?”
“You are not deficient, Hardcastle. You are in no way deficient, but my family needs me, and I’ve ignored them for too long. They love me, and they have no one else. You are fighting off prospective duchesses at every turn, but my family has only me.”
Sedgemere came strutting down the garden path, his duchess twirling her parasol at his side. Before they could notice the couple in the shade of the oak, Ellen kissed Hardcastle as passionately as she dared when he was looking so thunderous.
Then she stepped back. “Safe journey, Your Grace.”
“She makes no promises,” the duke said to his gelding. “You will note, horse, that I am sent toddling on my way with no further reassurances of anything substantive, no real explanations, no apologies. I am a duke, though, so I shan’t have a tantrum right here in the stable yard, such as any governess would know meant a fellow had finally been pushed too far.”
“Your Grace, we have company.”
Sedgemere was kissing his duchess farewell, rather shamelessly, or perhaps that was how a duke and duchess allowed a distraught guest a moment to gather her composure.
“We have company, and we are out of time,” Hardcastle said. “Not even a duke can defy the dictates of time.”
“I cannot deny the importuning of my family,” Ellen said. “You understand duty, Hardcastle, and they are mine.”
“I understand duty,” he said, tapping his hat onto his head. “I do not understand you. If I’m not back in time for the Dukeries Cup, bet your pin money on Linton’s boat.”
He led his horse to the mounting block, swung up, and waited for Sedgemere to turn the duchess loose. Her Grace came to stand beside Ellen beneath the oak as Sedgemere’s horse was brought out.
“They’re a very handsome pair,” Her Grace said.
“I prefer Hardcastle’s darker coloring,” Ellen said. “No offense to your husband.”
“I meant the horses,” the duchess replied. “Shall we sit by the duck pond for a moment, Miss MacHugh? I am not equal to dealing with the downcast expressions on the young ladies collectively grieving in my parlor.”
There would be grieving by the duck pond, did the duchess but know it. “I am at your disposal, ma’am.”
“Hardcastle has quite defied the efforts of the ladies to wrest a marriage proposal from him,” the duchess observed. “You were instrumental in foiling their mischief.”
“His Grace asked that of me, and I was happy to oblige.”
They found their bench, and as before, a half dozen placid ducks paddled around on the pond’s surface.
“You don’t appear very happy now, Miss MacHugh. I apologize for sending some of the men away, but Mr. Greenover had lost more than he could afford to lose, and I could not allow the problem with the maids to worsen if I wanted my guests to sleep on clean sheets. Then too, you were not getting enough rest.”
“I have never slept better, Your Grace.” Never felt more safe and cared for than when sharing a bed with Hardcastle, though late night visits and cozy chats were not love.
“Miss MacHugh… May I call you Ellen?”
Oh, dear. A scold or condolences was loaded into the duchess’s cannon, and either would be awful.
“Of course, ma’am.”
“I am Anne, and you will think me very forward for what I’m about to say, but at night I send Sedgemere to make a final patrol of the hallways in the guest wing, and to do that, he traverses the family wing. Twice he spotted Hardcastle at your door. If you ask it of me, I will compel Hardcastle to offer for you. Sedgemere says I shouldn’t, but he knows better than to expect meek complicity from me.”
The ducks erupted into an altercation, with flapping and squawking and much splashing about where all had been calm a moment earlier.
“His Grace has proposed,” Ellen said. “But I am needed elsewhere. He needs a wife of impeccable lineage and great consequence, while I… The very last thing I want is an offer of marriage compelled by propriety, exigencies, and ducal honor.”
The ducks settled their differences, though turbulence echoed on the surface of the pond.
The duchess remained silent a moment, then fired off a broadside. “Do you love him, Ellen?”
“Endlessly, and I could not bear for Hardcastle’s interest to cool in a year or two, while I’m left to console myself with his excellent manners for the rest of my life. If I marry Hardcastle, I’ll trade a year of anxious bliss with him for all the years I owe my family, and be doubly miserable.”
The ducks waddled onto the grass, their progress up the bank ungainly compared to their gliding about on the water. The lead duck raised his wings and flapped madly directly before Ellen, sending a shower of droplets all over her hems.
“Rotten boy,” the duchess said, opening and closing her parasol at the duck. “Shoo, and don’t come back.”
Her Grace set her parasol aside,
and there seemed nothing more to say, but one didn’t hare off from the company of a duchess without being excused.
“Men are dunderheads, sometimes. Women are too,” the duchess said. “We’re like those ducks, taking odd notions for no apparent reason, our thoughts churning furiously while all appears serene above the surface. I cannot fault you for wanting to be loved for yourself. I put the same challenge to Sedgemere, and he figured out how to convince me of his regard. Hardcastle is no less determined and no less intelligent.”
He was also no less a duke. Hardcastle wasn’t the problem. “Shall we go in, Your Grace? I’m abruptly peckish, and I’d like to look in on Christopher.”
“Oh, let’s do repair to the nursery. We’ll get up a cricket match with the infantry, and that will cheer the young ladies wonderfully.”
No, it would not. Nothing would cheer the young ladies short of a decree from the Regent that dukes were allowed eleven wives apiece. Ellen soon found herself amid the noise and merriment of a cricket match anyway, though in Hardcastle’s absence, all she wanted was to go up to her bedroom, lock the door, and start packing for the looming journey home.
*
“I saw you twice on my evening patrols, Hardcastle, and I wasn’t even looking for you,” Sedgemere announced as they brought their horses down to the walk. “Anne is ready to turn you over her knee, but I’ve counseled against such violence.”
“Your duchess has a stout right arm, does she?”
“I presented her with three boys upon her marriage to me, Hardcastle. Everything about my Anne is made of stern stuff. Why haven’t you secured Miss MacHugh’s hand in marriage?”
The countryside was summer-ripe, the rise toward the Peak District visible off to the west, and yet every mile traveled was a greater distance from the woman Hardcastle needed by his side. Ellen wasn’t being entirely honest with him, and the urge to turn his horse around and gallop back to her became a greater torment with each passing moment.
“Hardcastle, I asked you a direct question using simple words. Your reply is to gaze off at the horizon looking noble and infatuated. Have you lost your wits?”
“Yes.” And his heart.
Sedgemere let out a sigh of significantly longsuffering proportions. “Miss MacHugh turned you down?”
They were a good half mile ahead of the rest of the party, and privacy would be in short supply once they reached their destination.
“Ellen has refused my suit at least a half dozen times.”
“Dear me, old boy. Appears you’re bungling this rather badly.”
Hardcastle mentally set aside the problem that was Ellen’s stubbornness and focused instead on the problem that was the Duke of Sedgemere in a gleeful mood.
“Bungling should be easy for you to spot, Sedgemere, since you’ve done so much of it yourself,” Hardcastle shot back. “I, however, am an utter tyro at the sport. Ellen says her family needs her, but I merely want a duchess, any duchess. I do believe my dearest love is trying to protect me.”
This conviction grew the longer Hardcastle puzzled on the entire situation. Ellen’s regard for him was genuine, of that he was certain. He cast back over three years of sidelong glances. Three years when his slightest sneeze or headache was met with an attentiveness from the staff he was sure she’d inspired.
Her regard for him had been right under his nose for years, and he’d failed to grasp that. He was similarly failing to grasp the obvious now.
“She’s protecting you from herself?” Sedgemere said. “That makes no sense. Miss MacHugh is far better than you deserve.”
And to think Sedgemere owed his present marital happiness to the patient good offices of a devoted friend and fellow duke.
“You’re not helping, Sedgemere. A round of fisticuffs might restore my usual good cheer.”
“Promises, promises. You have no good cheer, Hardcastle. Have you gone down on bended knee, done the pretty, delivered the maudlin speech?”
This was not good news. “A maudlin speech is required?”
Sedgemere tugged on his cravat and adjusted his hat. “You say the words, man. Ladies long to hear the words.”
“I’ve asked Ellen to marry me in the King’s English. No beating about the bush, no prevaricating—not after the first time—no dodging the issue. I’ve asked her as plainly as a man—if you are laughing, I will make you regret it, Sedgemere. I’m on quite good terms with your boys, one of whom is my god-son, and your estate is home to more toads than you can imagine.”
“Anne is toad-proof. Put as many in our bed as you please.”
“She has you in her bed. That’s trial enough for any woman.”
Sedgemere’s smile faded to his characteristic glower. “Anne rather likes having me in her bed, I’ll have you know. Have you told Miss MacHugh that you love her? That she is the only woman in the world for you? That no matter how little she brings to the union, no matter how much talk will result, your love is greater than any obstacle?”
“Sedgemere, have you been keeping company with Greenover?”
“As little as possible, why?”
“You have lost your wits. One doesn’t make dramatic speeches to a woman of sense, as if one were any lack-wit viscount. One shows such a woman that she’s loved. One cossets and cuddles, one reads poetry and rubs her feet. One spends time with the lady and opens his heart and his past to her. One doesn’t…”
Maybe one did. Sedgemere was obnoxiously happy with his duchess, though she’d led him a dance all the way to the altar.
“Poetry, Hardcastle? You can recite Byron, but you can’t say three little words?”
“Go to hell. That’s three words.”
“I suggest you try those with Miss MacHugh. That will enliven the house party considerably.”
The words were easy—Hardcastle loved Ellen with all his heart—though his failure to give those words to her had been a dreadful oversight. She’d said her family loved her, told him that repeatedly, and he’d missed his cue every time.
Unease joined Hardcastle in the saddle. “Sedgemere, what do you know of Miss MacHugh’s family?”
“She’s granddaughter of the Earl of Dalton. Her aunt and Anne have a passing acquaintance. There’s another daughter, but no sons.”
“That’s all?” Sedgemere was one of those troublesome people who never forgot anything. Not a horse’s bloodline, not an article in the newspaper, not a speech in the Lords. “These people own land less than a day’s ride from your family seat, and you know nothing more than that about them?”
“Does seem odd, doesn’t it?” Sedgemere said. “Even if they can’t afford to entertain, we’d see them at the occasional hunt ball or Christmas musicale.”
A hunch blossomed into a suspicion in Hardcastle’s mind. “You will make my excuses to whichever duke we’re imposing on for the night. I have pressing business elsewhere.” He wheeled his horse around and headed at a gallop back toward the last crossroads.
Chapter Five
‡
“Those who were off visiting or enjoying the Dukeries Cup will be back in good time for tonight’s gathering,” the duchess assured Ellen. “Sedgemere has sent me no less than three notes confirming this scheduling, and I would sorely regret it if my duke’s word were no longer trustworthy.”
Ellen paced the length of the duchess’s private sitting room, until she was at the window overlooking the drive.
“Sedgemere said nothing about Hardcastle needing the ducal traveling coach?” This vehicle had not been in the mews when Ellen had visited the stables with Christopher earlier in the day.
“Sedgemere did not mention the coach,” Her Grace replied, sticking a finger into a bowl of white roses on the mantel. “Perhaps somebody was concerned about the possibility of rain, or a horse came up lame. Please do sit down, Ellen. You’re making me dizzy with your peregrinations.”
Her Grace shook droplets of water from her finger, and gave the bowl a quarter turn.
Ellen perched on
the very edge of a pink velvet sofa, for one did not ignore a duchess’s requests. Had Hardcastle been injured, that he’d sent for the coach? Had he decided to leave for Kent from one of the ducal residences he’d visited? How was Christopher to get home, and how was Ellen to return to her family?
“You are beyond hope,” the duchess said, crossing her arms. “If you simply pressed your nose to the window glass and occasionally thumped a hopeful tail on my carpets, your sentiments could not be more transparent. I do not understand why you refused Hardcastle, if he’s so very dear to you.”
Ellen didn’t bother pouring herself a cup of tea she’d neither taste nor enjoy. “I refused His Grace for two reasons. First, he deserves a wife whom he loves, deeply, madly, passionately, not simply a woman who’s familiar to him, attractive, and useful for fending off debutantes.”
This reasoning sounded tired to Ellen’s own ears. This excuse. Hardcastle hadn’t been much impressed with it either.
The duchess took a seat across from Ellen, her expression disgruntled. “A duke is not in the habit of yielding to mad passion, Ellen. He’s a creature of duty and restraint.”
No, he wasn’t. Not under all circumstances. At times, he could be a creature of mindless pleasures and endless desire, a creature of genial good company and generous affection.
“A duke is but a man,” Ellen quoted. “Sedgemere has told you he loves you, I’d guess. Told you he can’t live without you, and no other woman could possibly be his duchess. Sedgemere’s highest compliment is not that you’ve saved him from the clutches of the jiggling horde.”
Her Grace gazed at the roses, one of which had dropped a few pale petals on the mantel. “Sedgemere has a surprisingly effusive streak,” she said, rising to gather up the dropped petals and toss them into the unlit hearth. “Did Hardcastle use that term? Jiggling horde?”
“Several times, Your Grace.” Ellen rose as well, because sitting still and staring down the maddeningly empty drive was impossible. “This house party opened his eyes to his own marriageability, and he panicked, in as much as Hardcastle can panic.”
“Or he was brought to his senses,” the duchess said. “He’s besotted with you. I saw that parting kiss, Ellen MacHugh, and that was not the kiss of an indifferent man.”