“That’s all! Well, except for taking it out and removing the shell, of course.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Galen said as he lifted out the egg and put it on a waiting plate before sitting down on the bench beside it.
Verity and Jocelyn had set the table with delicate porcelain plates, cups and saucers, white napkins and silver teaspoons.
“The tea is ready now,” Verity said, sitting opposite him and beside Jocelyn, who was directly behind the plate of tarts, one of which showed definite signs of tampering.
Verity picked up a cup and saucer. “Tea, Your Grace?” she inquired in as formal a tone as if they were in Buckingham Palace, or as if she were a duchess.
A duchess.
“Indeed,” he replied just as gravely.
“Do you take sugar?”
“No, thank you.”
“Milk?”
“No. I prefer my beverages unembellished.” He glanced at Jocelyn. “Plain,” he whispered out of the side of his mouth, which made her giggle.
As Verity handed him his tea, she gave Jocelyn a pointed look, then the plate of tarts. “Would you care for a tart, Your Grace?” the little girl asked.
“I should be delighted. They look lovely,” he said sincerely, reaching toward the plate and selecting the tart beside the one that looked as if a little finger had been conducting exploratory surgery.
“Nancy helped me, but I did most of the work,” Jocelyn said proudly as Galen took a bite.
The Duke of Deighton had eaten many a tooth-some morsel in England and abroad, but he thought he had never tasted anything as good as little Jocelyn’s tart, and he told her so in no uncertain terms.
As she flushed with pleasure, he realized Verity was looking a little put out. He regarded her quizzically, while Jocelyn bit into her tart with great appetite.
“Jocelyn, when you have finished your tart, you may fetch more milk from the pantry and I’ll let you have a little tea,” Verity said.
Jocelyn’s rather jammy mouth widened, then she fixed Galen with a curious stare. “You have brothers?” she demanded.
“Not with your mouth full,” her mother said softly, quite unlike the sort of correction Galen’s father had often visited upon him.
“I have three half brothers,” he said, reaching out for another tart. “Buckingham, Warwick and Huntington. Buckingham is in the navy, Warwick is in the army and Huntington is still at school.”
“Those are funny names,” Jocelyn said as she wiped her mouth on a napkin.
“Unusual,” Verity corrected softly, and again Galen was struck by her gentle method of correcting their daughter’s mistakes.
“Yes, they are,” he answered. “My stepmother chose them because we are related to the families.”
“I would like to have a brother or a sister,” Jocelyn said wistfully.
“Perhaps someday you will.”
“How can I, when my Papa is dead—unless Mama gets married again.”
“Get the milk, please, Jocelyn,” Verity said as a very becoming blush spread over her cheeks.
Verity continued to blush as Jocelyn left the room.
“I didn’t mean to remind her of her loss,” Galen said, all the while wondering what Jocelyn would think if he offered to marry her mother.
She didn’t seem to find the idea of her mother’s remarriage unconscionable, and he felt distinct pleasure at that realization.
Then he noticed Verity wasn’t blushing anymore. She was regarding him with a censorious expression. “You shouldn’t patronize her.”
“When have I been patronizing?”
“When you told her her tarts were the best pastry you had ever tasted.”
“It’s quite true,” he protested.
She gave him a skeptical look.
It had been a long time since anyone had looked at the Duke of Deighton like that, without deference or awe—and he liked it. They might be any husband and wife sharing a simple domestic disagreement.
He thought of Guido and Angela, and had a sudden urge to burst into song.
“I like simply made foods better than fancy ones,” he said instead, “and I’m sure Jocelyn took as much care with them as the baker who made the Prince Regent’s wedding cake. Besides, I think those tarts had a special ingredient sadly lacking in the things I am served.”
“What might that be?”
“Love.”
“Oh.” Verity couldn’t meet his steadfast gaze; fortunately, before the silence could get even more awkward, Jocelyn came back bearing a pitcher of milk.
Verity poured a copious amount of milk into a cup, then added a little bit of tea.
Jocelyn settled herself back on her chair, looking quite pleased with the state of things. “Is your brother the captain of a ship?”
“No. My half brother is a lieutenant. The last I heard, Buck had taken ill and was recuperating at Gibraltar.”
“I trust it is nothing serious,” Verity said.
A coldness crept into the duke’s voice. “I assume he’s doing well. I have not heard otherwise. I would have been informed if he was dead.”
“Oh,” Jocelyn gasped, obviously taken aback by the unfeeling nature of the duke’s last words.
So was Verity.
He immediately appeared contrite; nevertheless, there was a look in his eyes that confirmed his relationship with his half brothers was not a close one.
“Is your other brother an officer, too?” Jocelyn asked warily before she took another sip of her beverage.
“He is an adjutant to the Duke of Wellington.”
“Really?” Jocelyn breathed, obviously impressed. “Was he at Waterloo?”
“Yes. So you see I am in earnest when I say they have all done more than I.
“Well, not Huntington, perhaps,” he corrected with a smile, “but he is well on his way to distinguishing himself at Harrow for the quality of his pranks.”
He fixed his gaze onto Verity. “I understand your mother also had a reputation for that sort of thing.”
“You did?” Jocelyn asked, staring at her mother with awe.
“I suppose Lady Bodenham told you some of my…activities?” Verity asked warily.
“She did, indeed. I particularly liked the one with the molasses.”
At that reminder, Verity couldn’t help smiling. She had been punished by having to stay in her room every evening for a month, but it had been worth it to see Miss Mintley’s face when she stepped in the sweet, sticky substance.
“What about molasses?” Jocelyn asked with avid curiosity.
“Oh, no,” Verity demurred, shaking her head and smothering her smile. “I’m not confessing to anything or giving certain little girls any ideas, especially ones who have no trouble coming up with mischief on their own.”
“Then what Sir Myron Thorpe told me is true?” Galen asked with astonishment in his voice and a twinkle in his eyes. “Can it be true that this young lady who has such a promising future as a pastry chef did indeed cause a cattle stampede down the main street of Jefford?”
Jocelyn giggled. “No,” she managed to say as she set her cup down with a rattle.
“The gate was unlocked and the cattle got out on their own,” Verity explained.
Then, to Galen’s delight, that mischievous gleam again lit her blue eyes. She looked at her daughter as if they were fellow conspirators. “Unfortunately, she also decided to practice her Indian war cry.”
“Her Indian what?”
“My Indian war cry. Like this.”
Suddenly Jocelyn threw back her head and emitted the most bloodcurdling yell Galen had ever heard.
“No wonder the cattle stampeded,” he said when she stopped and looked at him proudly. “I nearly ran out of here myself.”
He gave Verity a wry smile. “I daresay it’s a good thing you live so out of the way, or your neighbors would all have apoplexy.” He looked back at Jocelyn. “Wherever did you learn to do that?”
“My friend’s uncle i
s a sea captain who’s been to America. He taught her, and she taught me.”
“Sometimes it sounds as if we’ve got a war in our garden,” Verity said.
“We have to scream like that when we play Indians.”
“As long as you don’t try burning anybody at the stake again,” Verity cautioned.
Galen’s eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?”
“It was only one time,” Jocelyn assured him. “And we didn’t really set the wood on fire. But we pretend that’s what we’re doing on Guy Fawkes Day, and we do our war cries then. It’s great fun.”
“Since I was never allowed to make much noise as a child, I shall have to take your word for it.”
“You couldn’t make any noise?” Jocelyn asked, dumbfounded. “However did you do it?”
“I don’t think I played the same sort of games.”
“Would you care for more tea?” Verity inquired, thinking it best to leave the subject of Galen’s childhood.
“Indeed, I would enjoy it, and another tart, if I may.”
“Of course,” she replied.
He smiled again, slowly, the corners of his mouth lifting ever so slightly while his eyes…
“Your face is all red, Mama.”
“Is it?” she asked, putting her palms over her cheeks. “It must be the heat of the range.”
“I do think it’s exceptionally…warm…in this room,” Galen noted in a low, somewhat husky voice.
Did he feel as she did at that moment, as if there were some kind of cord of desire stretched between them that was constantly tightening whenever they were together?
The kitchen door suddenly flew open as if a great gust of wind had hit it.
But it was another force of nature: Nancy, who spoke without looking in the vicinity of table as she shut the door.
“Sweet simmering stew, what is this world coming to?” she exclaimed, more flushed and flustered than normal, even given her usual unrelenting brisk pace. “Here I was thinking how glad I was we’ve seen the last of them Blackstones for a while, when who do I meet but that Achilles’ Heel Rhodes, or whatever the dumpling of a man calls himself!”
Verity quickly got to her feet, fighting the urge to order Galen from her house or Jocelyn to her room, so that Nancy wouldn’t see the resemblance and guess the truth.
It was not that she didn’t trust Nancy. She did. But she also knew better than to trust to Nancy’s ability to keep a secret. Nancy often spoke before thinking. She might let the truth slip out.
“I believe you mean Claudius Caesar,” the duke said calmly as he, too, got to his feet.
Nancy whirled around and stared. “Who the devil are you?”
“Nancy!” Verity cried, aghast at her language, while Jocelyn clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.
“This is the Duke of Deighton,” Verity continued, accepting what she couldn’t change and doing her best to act as if nothing at all were unusual about this situation.
“The master of—what was it you called him?” Galen inquired evenly, “a dumpling?”
Nancy went so red Verity was afraid she was having an attack. “Your Grace, this is Nancy Knickernell, my servant—and my friend.”
Nancy’s considerable self-esteem reasserted itself. “Forgive me for speaking out o’ turn, Your Grace,” she said without a particle of contrition in her tone, “but he spoke most impertinently to me.”
“I am sorry to hear it and I apologize for him,” the duke said in his most conciliatory tones.
Galen’s deep voice and hazel eyes could be most conciliatory.
Indeed, Verity watched in amazement as Nancy’s expression actually softened before her very eyes. Under normal circumstances, Nancy could stay angry for days. She was always out of sorts for the whole duration of one of Clive and Fanny’s visits.
“The duke stopped by to visit,” Verity said.
Then Jocelyn went to stand beside him and Verity felt a shiver of dread as they smiled at each other.
Given their dark curls and the slope of their chins, Nancy would surely see the similarity.
All Verity could hope was that since Nancy was ignorant of her rendezvous with the Duke of Deighton at Lord Langley’s, she would put any likeness down to coincidence.
Yet what would she make of the duke’s easy familiarity and presence in the kitchen?
They should have rendezvoused in the wood again, by “accident.”
“We met him at Lady Bodenham’s, you see,” Jocelyn clarified.
“So your mother told me,” Nancy replied without a hint that she noted anything untoward about the pair.
Verity dared to breathe a little easier.
“As delightful as it is to meet you, Nancy,” the duke said, “I fear I have overstayed my welcome and must be on my way. Perhaps Miss Jocelyn will see me to the door?”
“Do you have to go?” Jocelyn asked mournfully.
“Alas, I must.”
“You’ll come back for another visit, won’t you?” Jocelyn asked.
“The duke may not have time. He is visiting here, you know, and Sir Myron—”
“Can easily spare me, I’m sure. I would love to come back and visit you, on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“You will make some more tarts.”
Jocelyn grinned and nodded rapidly.
“I took the liberty of putting Harry in your little carriage house,” he said. “My horse,” he added for Nancy’s benefit as he went to the back door. He put his hand on the latch, then turned back. “Oh, by the way, I believe Lady Bodenham is likely to call this afternoon.”
“Oh?” Verity murmured.
“With an invitation to join us for dinner at Sir Myron’s later this week, if I am not mistaken. I do hope you’ll be able to come.”
“I shall have to th—”
“We can go, can’t we, Mama?” Jocelyn pleaded.
“I fear this will be an invitation only for your Mama, this time,” he said gently. “It will be too late in the evening for you.”
Jocelyn frowned.
“But I am hoping you and your friend will allow me to play Indians with you at least once while I am in Jefford. I’m sure I can manage a war cry.”
Then the Duke of Deighton let loose a loud screech that made Nancy stare as if he had suddenly gone mad, while Verity and Jocelyn’s mouths gaped with astonishment.
“Forgive me, Nancy,” Galen said with a bow. “I was practicing my war whoop. I didn’t mean to startle you. Until later, Miss Davis-Jones, Mrs. Davis-Jones.”
His gaze held Verity’s for a moment before he opened the door.
And then he was gone.
“Sweet simmering stew!” Nancy muttered. “You had a duke in the house and you gave him tea in the kitchen.”
Verity and Jocelyn turned toward her. “He said he wanted to have his tea here,” Verity explained.
“Why? To see how the poor folk do?”
“He said he’d never had tea in a kitchen before,” Jocelyn replied.
Nancy sniffed. “I can believe it.” She looked a little mollified as she put on her apron. “Well, who are you to say no to a duke when he asks something, eh?”
“I saw no harm in it,” Verity replied.
“I think the duke is very nice looking, don’t you?” Jocelyn demanded “He’s got the nicest smile—but he does need to have his hair cut.”
“No doubt he’s just being careful,” Nancy replied sarcastically as she wiped the crumbs from the table. “I wouldn’t let that Magnus Pompous near my head with anything sharp for love nor money.”
“He’s fun, too,” Jocelyn continued. “He played football with me at Lady Bodenham’s. He wasn’t very good at it, but he was very nice.”
“Who boiled the egg?”
“The duke did,” Jocelyn said, grinning.
“Never!”
“He did,” Verity confirmed. “He said he had never cooked an egg, so Jocelyn showed him. And he was very impres
sed with the tarts.”
“He said they were the best he had ever had!”
Not for Nancy a doubt of the duke’s sincerity when it came to praise of her baking. She fairly beamed. “Well, then I hope he does come back—only next time, he shall have some pie.” She grew serious. “Now out of my kitchen, the pair of you, or they’ll be no dinner. I’ve got to set things to right.”
Content to let Nancy rule her culinary kingdom and anxious to avoid any further discussion of the duke, Verity obeyed.
Later that afternoon, Verity sat in her bedroom, thinking about Galen and Jocelyn and herself, and the visits they had shared.
Unfortunately, once the pleasure of his company and the euphoria of realizing that Nancy apparently saw nothing amiss wore off, she had come to the conclusion that they could not continue to see each other.
It was simply too much of a risk. While it seemed Nancy didn’t notice any resemblance this time, she might start to wonder if Galen became a frequent visitor. Nancy also knew that Verity had gone to school with the duke’s cousin, so she might make assumptions of previous meetings.
No, despite how much it was going to disappoint Jocelyn, she couldn’t risk having Galen come to the house again. She would have to explain to her daughter that nobles had many calls upon their time, and she hoped Jocelyn wouldn’t be upset for long.
She would also have to hope that since Galen was a mature man with more knowledge of the cruelties the world could inflict upon the innocent, he would understand and agree with her.
As for how she felt about this decision…her feelings didn’t matter. Jocelyn’s future happiness was much more important.
“There’s a man in a purple coat knocking on our door, Mama!” Jocelyn called from the parlor.
While Nancy answered it, Verity went to her bedroom window and looked outside.
Galen had predicted aright. Eloise had come and was seated in a barouche as if part of a parade in London. Even more noticeably, she wore an orange bonnet trimmed with yellow plumes that was surely considered the height of fashion and a long pelisse of the brightest yellow Verity had ever seen.
The Duke’s Desire Page 11