“Stop that.” Elise backed away from him. “It is a bit sultry, actually.”
“Whenever I’m with you, it is a lovely day, Elise. I have something for you.”
Out of his pocket, he once more drew her ring and placed it on her finger. She removed it at once, and holding it out to him, said, “I am grateful for your help with Robert, Gregory. But don’t think I don’t remember your caddish behavior yesterday. I only hope you’ll make Violet a decent husband and refrain from breaking her heart.”
Putting down the basket of roses, he pulled her to him so tightly she could feel his heart racing. “Don’t give me that look, Elise. I cannot marry where I do not love.” He began nuzzling her ear, dropping kisses on her neck.
As she wrenched herself away, the Duke of Ruisdell was ushered into the garden by Bates.
“Bit early in the day for that, is it not, Chessingden? Where’s your fiancée?”
Reluctantly releasing Elise, he said, “Right here.”
“Oh, are we to reenact the comedy of last evening?”
“We are not engaged,” Elise said. “The viscount is afflicted with a very short memory.”
“What the devil is he doing here pestering you?” Ruisdell asked.
Elise put a further distance between herself and Gregory, picked up the basket, and started on her way inside. “He is under the impression that, no matter what I say, I am betrothed to him. Gregory has obvious problems with the word ‘no.’ I suspect his nanny of having too acquiescent a disposition, giving him a false picture of the female sex,” she said. “But I am grateful to him. He’s talked Robert into going back to the Continent and taking up his painting again. He was even packing when Gregory left him.”
Frowning, Ruisdell said, “Well, he’s changed his mind again. He sent a fellow to wait on me this morning. He means to meet me on Hammersmith Common at dawn tomorrow.”
Elise stopped and turned to face the duke whose eyes she could now see plainly. They were free from alarm, looking merely bored. And their color was a heart-melting brown.
“That will not do!” she said with heat.
“You’re right,” the duke said. “Not that I wouldn’t be willing fight a duel for you, but it seems you are already affianced to one if not two men. Whereas I am nothing to you. I’m not certain I understand the man’s motive, exactly.”
Frustrated that her only male relative was her father in Shropshire, she said, “He doesn’t need a motive to become inflamed. And as I can attest, he is very strong.
“Your Grace, are you still planning to take me along to your friend, the magistrate?”
“I think it would be best if your, uh, second fiancé accompanied us. Waterford was just lighting out in his curricle when I reached his home. I questioned the servants to no avail.”
She shuddered. “He really is the most frightening man.”
Chessingden said, “I had better ask your aunt for a room. I must watch over you, darling. This appears to be serious.”
The duke shook his head. “He’s got a good six inches on you and three or four stone, at least. If your silver tongue does not work, you will not be able to restrain him. You did not see him seize hold of Miss Edwards last night. I imagine her upper arms are quite black and blue this morning.” Pausing, he raised a brow at Elise. She nodded and bit her lip. He continued, “If we are unable to discover his whereabouts, it would be far more satisfactory if I stayed here. Not only am I a soldier but I am a boxer as well. There is also the fact that I am not likely to be distracted by Miss Edward’s considerable charms.”
“But you’ve an injured leg!” Chessingden protested. “And what of the ton? They know you for a degenerate rascal. I will not have you sullying the name of my fiancée by moving into her home with nothing but two scatterbrained women for protection!”
“Really, Gregory! Aunt Clarice saved me with a poker last time. She is not scatterbrained. Sukey is a well-respected entomologist. And I will remind you once again that you are not my fiancé. Not now. Not ever.”
The duke treated Chessingden to a one-sided smile. Walking over to Elise, he went down on one knee and took her hand. “Your vast charms and keen mind have made me yours ’til death. Say you will add me to your list of fiancés!”
Laughing at his antics, she said, “Your Grace, this is so sudden! I hear you are a shocking rake. And didn’t you just disclaim any interest in my vast charms?”
He smiled and reiterated, “I am a far better choice for your protection. And if Chessingden thinks my reputation will sully you, we must have a pro forma engagement. But I shan’t dangle after you. Think of me as a friend.”
“I cannot approve of you, you know,” she said and grinned. “Not only are you a rogue but a Tory! However, it will be a famous masquerade. I have only one small question. Why would you do this for me?”
His face grew solemn. “I owe it to another.”
“To whom?” Chessingden asked as the duke rose to his feet.
“No one in your sphere, my dear viscount. A little mystery is good for those who tend to be too sure of themselves.”
“I say! If that’s not the pot calling the kettle black . . .”
“Chessingden, will you kindly disappear? You’re de trops,” the duke said off-handedly, taking the basket of roses.
Through this exchange, Elise had stood, transfixed. What am I to make of this?
“I will talk with your aunt,” the duke said. “We will put the announcement in tomorrow’s paper. That should shock the ton. I’ve never been engaged before. Not even as part of a hoax.”
Suddenly panicked, she thought of her mother. “Your Grace, if you do that, you will be sorry. I must tell you that you don’t know my mother. Her soubriquet is Lady Hatchet, and she will sue you for breach of promise when this is over.” She put her fingers up to her lips.
He smiled calmly, “Not if it is you who cry off, my dearest.”
Turning, he went into the house. “The nerve of the man!” Gregory exploded. “Who does he think he is? By gad, if your aunt goes along with this drivel, I will challenge him!”
Although she knew Gregory was serious, he suddenly seemed like a bantam rooster posing in the barnyard. She was almost tempted to laugh. And this was the man over whom she had been so fraught with grief? Hah!
As though divining her feelings, Viscount Chessingden stomped off. Elise stood, aware that a wind had sprung up, dissipating the humidity and lifting her curls until they blew about like something wild. She sighed deeply, and stretching her arms out as though she would embrace the world, she twirled around on one foot, aware of a tremendous feeling of well-being. Free! She was free of cloying emotion and cads, and soon she would be free of Robert. Perhaps Aunt Clarice would consent to taking a rest cure at some watering place where she could begin an entirely new novel, featuring a complicated rogue who had an intriguing secret life.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IN WHICH THE DUKE PLAYS HIS PART
Ruisdell had an unexpectedly difficult time with Elise’s Aunt Clarice. For one thing her Siamese cat didn’t like him and insisted on interrupting him with yowls. Finally, he thought of appealing to her imagination. “Fix this in your mind, my dear lady. I will appear to reform my ways so that I will not harm your niece’s prospects. Any woman who could reform me and then drop me like a hot coal is certain to increase her stature in society. After all, I am a fairly well established rake, and her reformation of me would be a triumph.”
“What I don’t understand,” Lady Clarice said, “is why you’re bothering with this.”
“Oh, didn’t I say? One of her former fiancés, Waterford, challenged me to a duel. Sent his man around this morning. We’re to meet tomorrow on the Hammersmith Common at dawn. Swords, I think. I intend only to pink him, but I am certain that will enrage him further. Elise will definitely be in danger, and it will be my duty to defend her since I will have contributed to that danger. As you saw last night, Waterford is determined to rescue her from me.”<
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“Lord Waterford is excessively unstable,” Aunt Clarice said. “It would be far better if you dragged him before a magistrate and put him in Bedlam.”
“I intended to do just that this morning. However, the man has gone to ground. No sign of him anywhere. But he will be on Hammersmith Common in the morning. ”
“Well, I don’t want anything untoward going on in my house. I shall advise my niece to lock her door. But I must say, for whatever reason, it is good of you to stand guard over her. And I shall stand guard over you!”
“Have you some notepaper then? I shall write out the engagement notice, and one of the servants can take it down to the Morning Post.”
After he had done this, the duke had a queer feeling not just in his head but throughout his body. Seeking the black leather wing-backed chair in Elise’s aunt’s library, he wondered if he were sickening for something.
Belatedly, he remembered the disembodied voice in the park and at the opera. Had it somehow been Beynon speaking? He had certainly never come this close to matrimony in his five and thirty years. Elise was an innocent, and already he didn’t think he could look Beynon in the eye. But for the presence of Chessingden, he would have come perilously close to ravishing his adjutant’s Sunshine there in the garden. It was going to be exceedingly difficult to refrain from his normal practice of deceit and seduction, for he really had no idea how to carry on a respectable courtship. When he had staged that comic opera proposal, Ruisdell had been surprised to feel a magnetic pull of attraction combined with his desire to protect Miss Edwards. He wasn’t used to associating with guileless innocents.
But he had only to remember his comrade’s laughing eyes when he described their playing Red Indians in the woods or meeting clandestinely at night to do nothing more than play jackstraws in their tree house, to swear to himself that Elise would not be tarnished at his hands. This game he had elected to play had all the elements of a farce or ridiculous melodrama. It obviously appealed to Elise. He remembered that Beynon had confided after a full-bodied laugh that she actually wrote and published novels under the pseudonym of “A Gentlewoman.” Standing, he searched the library shelves. There was plenty of poetry, a smattering of ancient sermons, and ah . . . yes. The Peculiar Happenings at Stanhope Down, by A Gentlewoman. Paging through it, he settled on a paragraph near the beginning.
Lady Claire was unfashionably robust in all matters of health. She rode to hounds as hard as any man, was a skilled archer, and had even been known to sea bathe. Under no circumstance had she ever felt the least like swooning, even when her brother, Adam, showed her the frog he had dissected. The appearance of a ghostly apparition in her bedroom was not something to which she was accustomed, however. “Get out of my bedchamber at once!” she pronounced firmly, pointing to the door. Did ghosts use doors?
He liked Lady Claire already. But the duke didn’t belong in a storybook life and could not let Elise Edwards try to put him there. He had been roughly nurtured for a dukedom by a tutor who believed strongly in corporal punishment. Until Beynon, he had never known an intimate friendship. Refusing to act like an aged spinster, he had declined a draught of laudanum for both his leg and his nightmares. While sparing him an addiction to the opiate, his refusal of the drug had doomed him to a dark life of bad memories, chronic pain, and exhaustion, which, of course, had the effect of making him surly. Even George thought him the devil incarnate.
Before he could read another snippet of the novel in his hands, he heard female voices in the hall. Opening the door, he was just in time to hear the woman he recognized as Violet Archer exclaim, “Engaged to Ruisdell? Elise, you must be mad!”
Opening the door, he came up behind her and said cheerfully, “Touched in her upper works, without a doubt, Miss Archer, but I assure you, she’s quite reformed me. The announcement’s just gone out!”
Startled, Violet turned to face him, at an obvious loss for words. “I’ve heard of your reputation! You’re a vicious heartbreaker of the worst kind! Elise is worth a hundred of you!” He merely smiled and nodded, causing her to turn back to her friend. “I can’t believe it! Elise, is this the real reason you broke your engagement to dear Gregory?”
“No, Violet. I did it because I knew he was really in love with you.” Elise invited them all into the navy blue saloon, carrying her vase of yellow roses. Situating them on the mantle, she asked, “Your Grace, I assume you’ll stay for luncheon? Violet?”
After her friend’s candid admission, Violet was unable to respond but stood gaping.
The duke took his cue from his “fiancée.” “Yes, my dear, I should be delighted.” He sat next to her on the sofa, and playing his part to the hilt, possessed himself of her hand. She threw him a fulminating glance.
Violet said, “I came prepared to offer you my deepest apologies, Elise. Though I am in love with Gregory, I couldn’t be happy until I knew if you were pining for him. You haven’t been out until last night, and you refused to receive me.”
Elise rang for the butler. “You know I never stir when I get to the heart of my writing, Violet. I haven’t been pining but creating a village of eccentric characters. It required all my attention, believe me.” As Bates entered, she instructed him to inform Cook that Miss Archer and his grace would stay to luncheon.
The duke remembered again the still, veiled figure in Green Park. She was lying to Violet, he was certain of it. She had been suffering that day. And Chessingden, judging from his appearance last night and this morning, was playing some type of double game. The duke’s certainty of this had compelled him to offer himself as her protection. For Beynon’s sake, of course. His adjutant would surely not approve of Chessingden or Waterford. Or of himself, for that matter.
A memory teased him. Something Somerset had said. Ah! The fateful charade. She had acted merely on the basis of that slim impression? Well, he could not blame her for being skittish after all that she had been through.
One fiancé down. One to go. Then I can bow out and go back to sitting at White’s nursing my leg and besting George at piquet.
He had lost the thread of the conversation entirely. Elise gave a merry laugh, and squeezing his fingers, she removed her hand from his grasp and placed it on his sleeve, saying, “Darling duke, I believe we’ve surprised everyone!” His arm tingled delightfully all the way up to his shoulder and across to his heart. He forgot his leg. He forgot George. He even tolerated her playful “darling Duke,” which under other circumstances would have nauseated him.
Lady Clarice entered the room at the tail end of her niece’s declaration. “You have been very naughty, Puss. I didn’t even know a thing about your partiality for this rogue until today when he asked for my permission. I didn’t hesitate to give it, of course, knowing that your mother and therefore your father would be delighted.” Turning to Ruisdell, she said, “You haven’t forgotten our invitation to dinner at the Harrisons’ tonight before the Sumners’ ball?”
Placing a hand over the small one now on his sleeve, he returned its squeeze. “Of course not.”
“Are you certain, my dear?” Elise asked.
“Quite.” He had obviously given her some reason to think him safe enough to bear teasing. Well, maybe he was. With her, at any rate. He administered an admonitory pinch to her hand.
How often did she role play? If she had a difficult mother and a scatterbrained aunt and wrote novels, maybe she had been playacting all her life. Beynon had seemed to think he was her only champion. Role-playing could be her way of coping with the world. What was underneath? Who was Elise, really? Did she even know?
“Cards, anyone?” the duke said, hoping to put a spoke in the conversational wheel. “We have enough for whist, if you’ll join us, Lady Clarice.”
“With the rain outside, I think cards will do admirably until luncheon. I’ll just have Sukey clear away her beetles from the card table. Perhaps in the meantime, Elise will introduce you to Henry Five. Our other pet. He was a gift to Sukey from the duke of Devonshi
re, one of her admirers long ago.”
“Beetles? Henry Five?” he quizzed, raising his eyebrows at Elise. Perhaps everyone in this house was slightly dotty.
Violet giggled.
Elise said, “Lady Susannah is well known to the Royal Society as the British expert on all varieties of the beetle on this island. She is preparing to present a paper on Sunday afternoon.” His fiancée returned his pinch. “I’m certain you won’t want to miss it, dear one. You might want to write it down in your appointment diary. It is sure to be fascinating!” Laughing, she stood. “Come to my Aunt’s Chinese saloon. I believe Henry Five is residing in there today. You’ll have to watch your fingers. He has an appetite for Tories.”
“Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” The duke joined in the game she was playing. “Being the gift of a renowned Whig?”
He didn’t know whether he was more astonished at Aunt Clarice’s Chinese saloon, with its bamboo Chippendale furnishings and obviously genuine Chinese landscape scrolls hung on the red silk walls, or at the fact that Henry Five was a tortoise allowed to roam free in the startling room.
“What does one say to a tortoise?” he asked.
“I don’t think he hears awfully well,” Elise told him. “Be sure to approach him slowly, so you don’t disconcert him, or he will retreat into his shell.”
Forgetting his dignity for the moment, Ruisdell squatted down and waited for the reptile to reach him. Then, slowly extending his arm, he ran his hand over the shell. It displayed quite a beautiful design of pentagons set together like a puzzle. “What a repulsive creature you are, to be sure. No wonder Lady Susannah declined to marry Devonshire.”
To his satisfaction, his lady proved to be very proficient at whist.
“My mother is a cutthroat,” she told him. “And way too often for my liking, I’m her partner. I dislike being cuffed on the ear.”
“You’re mother sounds . . . well, shall we say, interesting?”
“You’re as ruthless as she is. I think you are one of the few people in the world she could get along with.”
Three Rogues and Their Ladies - A Regency Trilogy Page 5