Nothing Like a Duke

by Jane Ashford

  His brother moved restlessly in his chair. “That’s tricky. Some women are self-conscious around a clergyman, and others are rather…strangely interested. I have to be careful not to rouse talk or expectations among the few young ladies in the village. It’s difficult to get to know anyone with a whole parish watching.”

  Robert saw his point. “Why not ride over to Salbridge for a visit? Lots of girls about there.”

  Randolph straightened, blue eyes shining. “That’s a splendid idea!”

  Too late, Robert realized that he hadn’t mentioned Flora’s presence. Randolph would meet her, and he would certainly remember the twitting Robert had endured at Sebastian’s wedding.

  As if reading his mind, Randolph said, “Did you come all the way up here to get away from that bluestocking?”

  “I’m not sure I—”

  “The one Ariel thinks you’re in love with?”

  His youngest brother’s wife was entirely too talkative, Robert thought.

  “I must say she didn’t sound like your type.”

  Robert scanned the room, searching for what Sebastian would call a diversionary tactic. As if he’d called on his military brother’s spirit, Robert immediately spotted one. “Is that Sebastian’s lute?”

  Randolph started, glanced at the case in the corner and then away. He looked intriguingly self-conscious.

  “What’s it doing here?”

  “It’s mine, actually. Sebastian got it for me.”

  Robert scented a secret. “Why?”

  Randolph cleared his throat. “I, ah, I had a strange experience last summer. A kind of daydream, you might call it. Brought on by an Indian gentleman’s drum and Sanskrit chanting.” His eyes grew distant. “I saw myself with a lute. It was unmistakably a lute. I was playing a ballad; the melody haunts me still. And I, er, returned from the daydream convinced that I had to reproduce that song. Precisely.” He stirred in his chair again. “It isn’t enough to pick it out on the pianoforte. I’ve tried that. It doesn’t do. So I am learning to play the lute.”

  Robert examined his brother’s face. He seemed perfectly serious. “I hadn’t suspected you of mystical visions.”

  “Quite the wrong word!” Randolph protested. “Far too grandiose and…fraught.”

  “I suppose they go along with your profession,” Robert mused. “Although…is that one quite orthodox?”

  “This has nothing to do with my profession. I’m simply learning a song.” Randolph cleared his throat again. “I’d appreciate it if you’d consider that a confidence, however. I wouldn’t want it repeated, particularly to the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

  “The—?” Robert gazed at him, astonished. “I wouldn’t know the archbishop if I tripped over him.”

  “All the more reason not to mention it,” answered Randolph.

  * * *

  Back at Salbridge Great Hall and changed out of his riding dress, Robert found the house quiet. He went to the library for a book, and observed a group of younger guests trooping past the window, Flora Jennings among them. Intrigued, he slipped through one of the glass doors and followed them to a bit of sheltered lawn near the edge of the shrubbery. The late afternoon was sunny and windless; the scene might have been placid if not for Philip Moreton, the younger son of the Salbridge household. Robert watched him rush about the grass like an inexperienced sheepdog herding…something less docile than sheep. Cats, perhaps.

  A skinny lad of seventeen, still working on his full growth, with gangling limbs and big, occasionally clumsy hands, Philip was brown-haired and brown-eyed like his sister, Victoria. Robert knew that his sporadic efforts to be sociable concealed shyness. Philip was slated go up to Oxford for the Hilary term after the holidays, and Robert had heard him express some unease about his level of preparation.

  Robert watched the lad nearly trip over an invisible hummock and recover with a blush. He’d have to put Philip on to Alan, Robert thought. His collegial brother would certainly help if needed. Robert remembered what it was like to be on the cusp of manhood, at one moment convinced you were the smoothest, most sophisticated fellow in the world, and the next stricken with the certainty that you were an utter clod.

  “It’s a new sort of game,” Philip said, directing two footmen who carried a large chest from the house. “Or an old sort revived.” He opened the chest. “I found these in one of the attics.” He pulled out an odd wooden mallet with a slender handle that reached the center of his chest. “I couldn’t tell what they might be until I found a picture in The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England. It showed someone using a thing just like this”—he brandished the instrument—“to play a game called paille-maille.”

  “What, like the street in London?” asked one of the other young men.

  “Exactly,” said Philip. “The book said Charles the Second used to play it there with his courtiers. It was very fashionable, and the Mall in St. James’s Park was named for it. It comes from the Italian words for ball and mallet.”

  He flushed again as the group began to cluster around him. Robert could practically hear him worrying that he’d sounded ridiculously pompous.

  Flora stood on the other side of the group, her alluring figure not quite obscured by a knot of other young ladies. Robert was acutely conscious of her, as if she was a lodestone to his compass. It was a mystery as unfathomable as Randolph and his lute. Robert knew prettier ladies. Many were more vivacious, more sweetly attentive. But Flora Jennings compelled his attention.

  “It’s something like ground billiards,” Philip continued. “See the arches I’ve set up?” He pointed, and heads obediently turned to observe the knee-high metal hoops dotted about the lawn. Robert hadn’t noticed them till now. They were rather hard to see against the sod.

  Philip bent and took a smooth wooden ball from the chest, holding it up for all to see. It was larger than a cricket ball and showed faded bits of red paint. “Each player gets a mallet and a ball,” he said. “You hit your ball through the arches to reach that stake.” He pointed again. Robert saw the sturdy stick of wood driven into the grass at the end of the lawn. It nearly blended into the trees beyond. “Whoever makes it with the fewest blows wins,” finished Philip. “I thought we could give it a try.”

  As Robert’s gaze shifted from the stake back to Philip, it caught Flora’s. He could see a host of questions simmering in her vivid blue eyes. Of course she would want to know all about Charles the Second’s games. She’d be imagining bewigged noblemen in jewels and brocade and lace mincing about the Mall, hitting wooden balls from one end to the other. That was the other thing about her. She was full to the brim with ideas and theories; she made his mind fizz like fine champagne. No one else in his life made him feel so energized. But she was not asking those urgent questions. Had she actually listened to his advice?

  Salbridge Great Hall was no place for the kinds of conversation they’d had in London and Oxford, he thought with a pang. Long, lively…passionate discussions would draw attention and speculation and, eventually, spiteful comments. People would whisper that she was setting her cap at him. An alluring thought that he must nonetheless prevent. He looked away from her.

  “What are the rules?” asked one of the young men. He’d taken a mallet from the chest and was idly swinging it in one hand.

  “Nobody knows,” replied Philip. “The book said the game had dropped out of use.”

  The young man looked speculatively at the mallet. The glint of mischief in his expression did not bode well, Robert thought.

  Philip walked about handing out mallets. Some people drew back; others stepped forward eagerly. Robert took one. Victoria and Flora appeared, rather, to accept those thrust upon them. A stocky man about Robert’s age examined his with interest. “It looks like a similar thing used in India,” he said with a soft Irish lilt. “This is shorter, but that game is played on horseback.”


  “You’ve been to India?” Flora asked.

  Curiosity must be nearly choking her by now, Robert thought, hiding a smile. Flora Jennings was used to pursuing any topic that caught her fancy as far and as long as she pleased.

  “I have,” answered the Irishman.

  “You must tell me about it,” Flora said.

  “With great pleasure,” was the reply.

  Who was this fellow? Robert wondered. He recalled his name—Malloy. Sir Liam Malloy. He had an estate in Ireland. The usual crumbling wreck and pile of debts, no doubt.

  Philip got the players lined up along the near end of the lawn. They started out taking turns, and people soon found that propelling the balls over the lawn was more difficult than they’d expected. The grass looked smooth, but it was in fact dotted with small lumps and tussocks that deflected shots in unpredictable ways.

  As the hard wooden balls sped across the sod, it occurred to some of the players that preventing others from reaching the hoops was as effective a strategy as getting there oneself. These enterprising souls began using their shots to send opponents’ balls careening into the shrubbery.

  “Don’t muck about,” called Philip, looking irritated.

  “You said there were no rules,” was the laughing reply. The fellow whacked first one, then another ball into the bushes with resounding cracks.

  Startled, Flora watched her ball fly off. She’d been waiting for her turn, though the rota seemed to have disintegrated into more of a melee. She could see no reason for the assault on her ball. She was about to go after it when another went zooming past her feet.

  “Look out!” cried Lord Philip Moreton. “It won’t be funny if someone is hit by one of these things.”

  Indeed, they made effective missiles. At least they weren’t flying through the air, Flora thought as she walked across the grass. Lady Victoria came up beside her. “Mr. Trevellyn knocked mine right into the brambles,” she said. “I’m not sure Philip was wise to suggest this game.”

  “He should have made up some rules,” Flora remarked.

  “That would have been clever,” the younger girl replied.

  She said it as if cleverness was a rare and suspicious thing, Flora thought. And immediately dismissed the idea. It made no sense.

  They walked side by side to the fringe of bushes. Flora found her ball under a spreading evergreen, but Lady Victoria’s was more elusive. They pushed through branches together until they spotted it near the roots of an arching berry bush.

  “Oh dear,” said the other girl, looking down at the delicate lace trimming her dress. Obviously it would catch and tear on the thorns. “I’d better call a footman.”

  “From the house?” said Flora. “No need. I’ll get it.” She wouldn’t have to crawl, she decided, marking out a passage through the thorny growth. She could crouch and creep under an arched branch. Her plain gown would be in no danger.

  “Really?”

  “It won’t be difficult,” Flora replied. She bent and edged her way beneath the branch. At the center, she half knelt to pick up the ball, then made her way back out. She handed the ball to Lady Victoria.

  “Thank you.” The girl surveyed Flora with curious dispassion, and without visible gratitude, then turned to walk back to the game. “Mama says that Mr. Trevellyn teases because he admires me.” Lady Victoria examined the wooden sphere she held. She shook her head. “It seems nonsensical to me.”

  Flora placed the name from the introductions. Edward Trevellyn was a large, boisterous young man, with pale-blond hair and a penetrating voice.

  “So you are particularly well acquainted with Lord Robert?” Lady Victoria said.

  Something in her tone brought Flora alert. Her companion’s voice held much more than idle inquiry. “We are distantly related,” she said, as he had yesterday.

  Lady Victoria seemed to consider this as they stepped through the final screen of branches.

  Up ahead, a young man shouted in triumph as he slammed his ball through one of the metal arches. It nearly struck Sir Liam Malloy’s foot on the far side; the older man had to leap into the air to avoid it. A tangle of players contended in the middle, mallets swinging like claymores. Flora stopped to contemplate the seething mass. Most of the ladies had drawn back, clustering on the opposite side. Lord Robert stood near them with Philip, who was wringing his hands. “Poor Philip is so bad at games,” observed Lady Victoria. “It is a continual trial to him.”

  Her brother did look distressed. “I think we’d best move to the side,” Flora said. A ball sped past on their right. It crashed into a small tree, ricocheted, and disappeared into the bushes.

  Lady Victoria nodded. They edged along the lawn toward the other young ladies. “I understand you’re quite a bluestocking,” she said.

  Flora glanced at her. The word was almost always meant as an insult. There’d been a comic opera of that name several years ago, cruelly mocking.

  Lady Victoria didn’t look at her as they walked. “Mama said you were terribly learned,” she added.

  Her softness was all surface, Flora decided. There was something more complicated underneath. Which would have been quite interesting, if not for the whiff of threat that had, inexplicably, entered the conversation. Lady Victoria’s tone was making Flora uneasy.

  “I dislike books myself, and quite often don’t get the point of a witty remark.” The daughter of the household said this as if she was proud of it.

  Mystified, Flora made no reply.

  “I think gentlemen prefer it that way,” Lady Victoria added.

  “What way?”

  Her companion stopped and faced her. The brown eyes that Flora had thought doe-like drilled into her. “They may be briefly diverted by smart talk and odd studies, but for their wives, they want quite a different sort of female.”

  The words sounded like a gauntlet thrown down. Flora was irresistibly reminded of duelists meeting at dawn, shots ringing out in morning mists. She wasn’t sure whether to protest or laugh.

  “When I was fourteen, I told Lord Robert I intended to marry him,” Lady Victoria continued. “He said he would wait for me.”

  The intensity in her voice startled Flora. “But that was just a—”

  “He may have been diverted by…something last season,” interrupted the younger woman. “My first season,” she added darkly. “Something that kept him from places where I might have seen him. But I made certain Papa would invite him here this autumn. To my home, where there will be plenty of time to remind him of his promise. And he is not married.” She finished with the air of someone clinching an argument and a positively searing glance. “You had better not get in my way.”

  With that, Lady Victoria sauntered over to the other young ladies. Watching her go, Flora felt as if a pampered house cat had suddenly snarled and twisted ’round and bitten her hand, hard enough to draw blood. Only, no. Everyone knew that cats had abrupt changes of mood and might scratch. She’d thought Lady Victoria was another sort of creature altogether. Did she actually consider Lord Robert’s offhand remark of years ago a promise? Flora would have wagered any amount of money that he had no memory of the conversation.

  Flora kept to the edge of the group as they welcomed Lady Victoria and pointed out the antics of the gentlemen. Lord Robert stood on the other side of the lawn, a poised contrast to the schoolboy-like skirmish. He stepped forward as if he might come and speak to her.

  “Did you crawl into the bushes?” asked a male voice at Flora’s back. She turned to find Sir Liam next to her. “You have leaves in your hair,” he pointed out.

  She put a hand to her curls, found the leaves, and removed them.

  “I wonder Lady Victoria didn’t tell you,” the man added.

  In light of their recent exchange, Flora didn’t. “That would have been kind,” she replied.

  Sir Liam blinked at
her dry tone. “I saw you bend down,” he said.

  Flora wondered if she’d shown the whole party her petticoats.

  “In a perfectly unexceptionable way. You’re rather intrepid, aren’t you?”

  “It was hardly an expedition into the jungle.” It came out more acid than she’d meant, but he only laughed. Flora realized she was still holding her retrieved game ball. She put it on the ground.

  As she started to straighten, another ball hurtled by, two feet above the ground and only inches from her head. She felt the stir of air on her cheek as the hard wooden sphere hissed past. It bounced along the sod behind her like a stone skipping over water and disappeared into the shrubbery. A distant crack suggested that it had hit a tree trunk. Flora leaped backward, steadied by Sir Liam.

  Across the lawn, Lord Robert grasped the arm of the young man who’d hit it. He took the mallet from him and set it, along with his own, back in the open chest. Flora expected an argument, but the younger man accepted the intervention with cordial deference. Lord Robert let him go and stepped into the dispute that had erupted over who’d won the contest. Flora watched him civilize a gaggle of shouting noblemen without apparent effort. In fact, they all appeared eager to hear his opinion and accept his judgment. Flora watched in wonder. Suddenly, all was good-natured raillery.

  And with that, the game was over. People replaced their mallets and started back to the house. Lord Robert went surrounded by a jostling, admiring train of young men.

  Lingering to avoid Lady Victoria, Flora found herself walking beside Lord Philip. “Well, that was a disaster,” he said. “Why do I try? It always goes wrong.”

  “I think people had…fun,” Flora said.

  He stared at her. “Fun? They ran amok. Look at the holes in the lawn. As if it’d been attacked by an army of moles. Finch, our head gardener, will want my head for this.” He looked desolate, and very young.

  Flora was moved by a desire to reassure him. “Everyone will remember the game.”

  “As an utter debacle,” he replied glumly.