by Ruby Royce
To the teenage girl in all of us
An Apple Pie for a Duke (A very romantic comedy)
Delicious Regency by Ruby Royce, Vol. 1
© 2012 by Ruby Royce
All rights reserved
http://www.rubyroyce.com
[email protected]
Cover photo “Ruby” by Karolina Fritz
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters, other than historical persons, are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
1.
Yorkshire, March 1821
What a mess!
Dominic St.Yves, His Grace the Duke of Surrey, opened the wooden door and entered the Red Mill's stable. Coeur de Lion, the Duke of Surrey's favourite horse, whinnied as he heard his master's footsteps approaching.
“What have you gotten yourself into?” Dominic inquired of the exquisite animal, which immediately began to investigate the pockets of its aristocratic proprietor with hungry anticipation. “I certainly did not bring you any treats, you vile creature,” that very proprietor snarled. “We could be hunting at Longmore today had you not gotten it into your head to escape poor Woodrich. Can you actually imagine how his never-ending declarations of guilt are getting on my nerves? He’d throw himself into his sword, if he owned one.”
Coeur de Lion blew hot air into the duke's face and seemed to regard the issue as closed.
Dominic chuckled.
“Well, what can one expect from---” he stopped and held his breath.
Somebody was coming.
Without thinking, Dominic climbed up a bolder leading into the hayloft. He hoisted himself over the edge just as he heard the door creaking. He had no intention of being found in a dirty stable, discussing his groom's suicidal tendencies with his renegade horse. The duke was one of the richest and most powerful men in England. One of the most feared! He had a reputation to maintain.
The hayloft was dark but there were gaps between the planks through which Dominic could see. He pressed his forehead against the wood to take a look at the intruder.
It was a young girl of fourteen or fifteen. Quite pretty, small and maybe a little on the chubby side, but nonetheless, quite pretty. She was dressed simply yet of fine cloth and she had an air of confidence. It led Dominic to believe she was the innkeeper's daughter. No mere serving wench would stroll about so nonchalantly.
The girl opened the door to an empty stall and sat down in the straw.
She pulled something from her pocket. It was a bottle of wine or some other alcoholic beverage.
Was she coming here to drink?
Dominic was shocked. He had four younger sisters of his own and he had always believed them to be innocent of all things worldly. Did young girls regularly steal out of their homes to take a secret sip from the bottle? Of course they did not, not those of high birth. Or did they?
The girl lifted her head and listened. Dominic listened as well and indeed, he heard the sound of hooves approaching rapidly. The rider halted in front of the stable.
This time, the door was flung open violently. An exquisite pony trotted in, saddled and bridled. Without hesitation it entered the stall where the young girl had been waiting.
A young pirate, PIRATE?--- anyway, a young corsair or pirate, wearing his hat in an extremely rakish angle, swaggered into the stable carrying a sabre in one hand an some bundle in the other.
Dominic tried not to laugh. Had he hit upon a secret tête-à-tête?
“Isadora!” The pirate cried out dramatically with an absurdly rasping voice. “I shall not force thee to be mine, but I swear, by the end of this kiss, thou wilt be mine willingly!”
The girl laughed and held out the bottle.
“Lizzy! You did not!” the pirate gasped, took the bottle, pulled off the lid and sniffed. “What is it?”
“Cider!”
“And I brought apple pie!” The pirate hugged the innkeeper's daughter.
Dominic was rather spellbound by now. Not only did the pirate speak in a well-bred manner but also, the voice was not at all that of a young man, rather that of a--- In that very instant the pirate pulled off his hat and let it fall to the ground. Out came a head of golden curls, braided and pinned up in what Dominic found to be quite an artful coiffure.
The golden head turned as it sheathed the sabre.
Dominic felt his cheeks grow hot and other body parts even more so.
That was the most beautiful and bewitching face he had ever seen in his thirty-one years of life! And he had seen quite a lot of beautiful faces of the female variety, in all shades and colours, but not one had ever bitten, yes, bitten into his soul as the face of this young creature wearing men's clothes in a stable somewhere in... Where am I? Right, Yorkshire. What am I doing in Yorkshire?
“Did you bring the book, Gigi?” the innkeeper's daughter asked.
The beautiful angel nodded.
Angel? Devil? Pirate? Dominic could not yet quite decide what it would be.
Her golden hair and the shape of her face were most definitely angelic, but her slanted, bright green eyes were those of some terrifying demon come to earth to lure him down into the deepest abyss of hell.
“Yes!” Gigi, the insufferably beautiful pirate, produced a book from her horse's saddlebag. “The Princess and the Privateer, but you must finish it by tomorrow, else my mother will know I took it when she gets back from London.”
“London...” the girl Lizzy sighed. “I wished I could go to London and be a debutante...”
“You can go in my stead,” Gigi declared while she unwrapped her bundle. The strong smell of apple pie rose into Dominic's nostrils.
Not only into Dominic's nostrils, unfortunately. Coeur de Lion sniggered. And again. Then he beat his hoof against the door of his stall. Gigi the pirate looked up.
“I thought all the horses were out today?”
“Well, yes,” Lizzy said. “Ours are out. But we have an injured horse stabled. You must take a look. He's magnificent. A stallion!”
Gigi rose and walked towards Coeur de Lion who looked longingly at the apple pie she had brought along.
“God almighty!” Gigi sighed. “What a beauty! What's he doing here? Whom does he belong to?”
Lizzy, who had begun devouring her apple pie, swallowed and explained.
“He was on the way to Longmore last week for the earl's great end-of-season hunt but he escaped his grooms and jumped a fence not too far from here. He must have landed in a rabbit hole. He was limping a lot when he came, but he’s fine now. Somebody should be coming today or tomorrow to bring him back to Seventree.
“Seventree?” Gigi the pirate took a step back.
Obviously she had heard of the Dominic's home; but then again, who had not?
“Yes!” Lizzy nodded enthusiastically. “It's the duke's favourite horse!”
“Really...” Gigi walked back up to Coeur de Lion's stall. “You know, I met him once. The duke.”
What? When? Dominic was flabbergasted. Had he seen this creature before? That was impossible.
“What? When?” Lizzy asked.
Dominic immediately forgot how undignified he felt, hiding in a hayloft, watching young girls at their play. He was simply staring down through his little gap, mesmerised.
“It was a long time ago. Five years, maybe? I spent the summer with my aunt and uncle at Hayford. They never knew I was there when he arrived. I hid behind a curtain.”
How appropriate.
“What was he doing there? Why was he there?”
Yes, why on earth have I been to Viscount Whatwashisnameagain at Hayford?
“He threatened to shoot my cousin John.” Gigi stroked Coeur de Lions head. “Appa
rently John had made some overtures to one of the duke's sisters. His grace arrived in the raciest phaeton I've ever beheld. He didn't even wait to be announced, he simply stormed into the drawing room and coldly told them that if John was ever to be seen near his sister again, he'd shoot him dead.” She smiled to herself. “I wish he had. I can't stand my cousin John.”
“What's he like?”
“Fat and ugly.”
Dominic felt his stomach churn.
Lizzy giggled. “The duke?”
“Of course not. The Duke of Surrey is the most handsome man in England. Everybody knows that.”
“Is he really?”
“Well, I have not met too many men, but he is the most handsome specimen I've ever seen.”
Dominic exhaled, relieved.
“But he is very scary. And he's quite old I think. ”
Now Dominic felt as if somebody had hit him with a frying pan.
Old? I'm not old. Although I must be old to a silly girl of seventeen or whatever age they let them come out nowadays.
“But he’s very beautiful and so dangerous and so manly, oh!”
The duke felt a little better.
“When he rushed by, all cold rage, I was so afraid he might discover me and shoot me instead! But I also wanted him to rescue me from my boring relatives and take me away to his castle where he’d do all sorts of unspeakable thinks to me!”
Then, to the flustered Dominic's absolute outrage, she fed her apple pie to his prize stallion.
“Gigi, you can't!” Lizzy shrieked.
“Who's going to find out?” Gigi laughed. “Do you think the horse will tell its master? Imagine! Do you think he'd punish me? Oh, I wish he would! Like in the novels... “ She lowered her voice to interpret that of a man. “Eugenia... I will let you dwell in eternal agony.”
She threw herself down to the ground.
“Oh! Dominic,” she pleaded in her own voice. “Oh no, forgive me! I never meant to feed this delicious apple pie to your horse! I know it was wrong! Oh, no, NOOOOOO!!! Oh YES!!!” She stretched out and raised her arms towards the ceiling.
The entranced Dominic noticed that the pirate possessed quite an astonishing body. For a moment he feared he might drill a hole into the plank where his hips were pressing against it as he witnessed that young siren offering herself up to him.
“You will be my slave, Eugenia...” Gigi roared on. “And every night I shall devour you!”
Lizzy laughed helplessly as Gigi rolled back and forth on the floor, moaning and pleading. “Oh, Dominic, yes, punish me! Punish me! Devour me!”
Finally, the vicious creature grinned like a pixie, got back to her feet, dusted herself off and returned to her friend.
“Let's try the cider, shall we?”
“Oh yes, let's! Although you will taste wine and champagne as soon as the London season starts, while I stay here on bread and water.”
“Poor little Lizzy.” Gigi poked her friend into the ribs. “Well I don't think I shall drink much when I'm in London. I don't wish to make a fool out of myself in front of all those potential husbands.” She wrinkled her nose at the word “husband”.
Lizzy tried a sip of cider and nodded approvingly.
“You'll have to marry one of them in the end.”
“Indeed.” Gigi pulled a face.
“Maybe you’ll meet the duke and he’ll marry you!”
Dominic stiffened. At least those parts of him, which had not stiffened earlier.
“I do not think so,” Gigi, or Eugenia, or whatever her bloody name is, proclaimed.
“Yes! You’re so pretty and he isn't married, is he?”
“We would’ve read about that,” Gigi conceded. “But I’m not as noble as that. And anyway, I don't think I'd want to marry him. He's too sinister. Too dangerous.”
The girls finished the bottle, still giggling.
“I think I'm feeling a little tipsy now,” the devilish Eugenia muttered and wiped her pouting lips.
Lizzy took hold of her friend's arm. “You must promise me, if he proposes, that you'll accept him! No, you must swear!”
Gigi wrinkled her nose again. “Fine, fine... In the unlikely event of His Grace of Surrey asking me to be his wife, I swear I shall accept.”
“Swear on Mr. Wimple's life!”
“No, Lizzy. I couldn't!”
“Yes, you can and you will. Swear on it!”
Eugenia pulled loose from her friend. “Alright, Lizzy, I swear on the life of my beloved Mr. Wimple that I shall accept the Duke of Surrey's hand in marriage, if he should ever propose to me.”
Dominic did not know who Mr. Wimple was but it made him feel uneasy that the life of the poor man should depend on the mood of such a hoydenish female.
Lizzy got up. “Well, Your Grace, I have to be off. There is plenty work to be done for my sister's wedding and mother will start wondering what has become of me.”
“Yes, you are perfectly right. It'll be lunchtime soon and Papa won't be happy if I'm late.”
Lizzy saluted in a military fashion.
Gigi did the same. “Good bye, Lizzy and good bye future husband's beautiful horse.”
She picked her hat up from the floor, put it back on her curls and dragged her pony out of the stable. Lizzy followed suit.
Dominic was alone once again.
He waited a while before he climbed down the bolder and groggily set his feet to the ground.
Coeur de Lion watched him with disinterest.
The horse still sported crumbs of apple pie on its nose.
“Traitor,” Dominic groaned. “Can't you ever keep silent? Don't you know what you've just done?”
2.
Seventree, Surrey, April 1821
“Did you say London?” Elizabeth Barnham, Countess of Chestendon, repeated for the third time as she stared at her older brother in astonishment. “You did not say London, did you, Dominic? Did you really say London?”
“What is it, Betty, that you find so shocking about me going to London? I do it all the time.”
“Indeed you do, my dear, but never during the season. You hate the season! Apart from the races of course. But London! Are you finally thinking of getting married? As you well know you should?”
“Don't be ridiculous,” Dominic hissed. “I have no intention of getting married before I’m gouty and old.”
His sister raised his voice a little. “Somebody might shoot you in a duel, Dominic! You might fall off a horse and break a neck!”
“A neck? You have peculiar ideas about my anatomy,” Dominic grinned.
Elizabeth frowned. “You know what I mean.”
“I've yet to meet the man who can surpass me in shooting and the horse that can throw me off.”
“You are arrogant and haughty.” To underline her opinion Elizabeth tapped her elegant fan against the tea table.
“I'm Surrey. What else would I be?”
Elizabeth sighed, unwilling to fight with her older brother. She was expecting her third child in the early summer and did not enjoy verbal parrying as much as she used to.
Dominic left her to the novel she had been reading before he had intruded upon her to inform her of his decision to move to his London house at Grosvenor Square for the rest of spring.
***
He had finally given in to temptation.
Not one day had passed since that bizarre encounter with Gigi the pirate at that horrid inn in Yorkshire when he had not repeated the scene in his mind over and over again.
The beautiful girl…
The way she had moved and sighed his name…
It kept him awake at night and when he finally fell asleep, his dreams were full of her.
He had to see her again to rid himself of that awful spell. Experience had taught him that, often enough, a woman who seemed irresistible at the first encounter was only mediocre at the second.
He had at least found out who she was.
She was the Honourable Eugenia Cartwright, daught
er of the former General Cartwright now Baron Cartwright, who was a war hero of many battles and second husband to the former Countess of Rivendon. Eugenia was their only child.
The Countess Rivendon had lost her first husband and two sons in a terrible coaching accident when Dominic had been only a child. If he remembered correctly, she had even been friends with his late mother.
He'd have to ask his man Markston to remind him how to address the remarried widow of an earl who was now married to a baron. Dominic usually prided himself on his impeccable knowledge of social complexities, as was the duty of any peer, but his valet was – as is often the case with valets – a pedantic connoisseur of the ton and all its intricacies.
Yet, why should I even speak to Countess Rivendon, Baroness Cartwright or whatever she calls herself nowadays? I have no interest in that family. I only want to get rid of my belligerent obsession with her daughter. I can't walk up to her and say “Lady Such or Such, I keep having this dream of your beloved virgin daughter riding me astride. There's apple pie involved, too. What's to be done?”
He felt the blood rush into his face as his thoughts lingered on the images of that particular dream. Maybe he had been ill that day at the stable. Maybe it had been a fever.
Whatever it had been, he would find out and soon.
3.
Bond Street, London, April 1821
The Honourable Eugenia Cartwright demurely kept her eyes down as she walked along Bond Street, accompanied by her mother, her aunt and several maids. After two weeks of the London season she felt exhausted. The older women had dragged her from one ball to the next, constantly robing and disrobing her, bedecking her with necklaces, scarves and hats.
Growing up on a small estate in Yorkshire had been a tranquil experience. Gigi’s parents had never entertained more than a dozen of close friends.
In London everything was strenuous and loud.
She wanted to go home but her mother would not let her. A girl had to be introduced into society properly, she had said. And that was that.