Duchesses in Disguise

by Grace Burrowes

  “Might I ask a favor, ma’am?” he asked.

  “Of course, sir, anything. Particularly if what you request might repay you in some small way for your generous hospitality.”

  He waved away her words. “Please, do not think anything of such a trifle as playing host to you and your charming companions. Indeed, I consider the accident that brought the three of you to Rose Heath to be nothing short of providence.” He smiled ruefully. “But if it would not be an inconvenience to you, ma’am, might I ask you to visit a little with my friend Mr. Stirling, since he must still rest his ankle?”

  He took out a watch and glanced down at it, and she suspected him of avoiding meeting her eyes. “As his host, I would do so myself, of course, but I’m quite taken up with something that must be seen to. I hate to think that the poor man might be alone for hours on end today. And likely tomorrow as well.”

  Surely Colonel Stratton was not playing matchmaker? But whether he was or not, as his guest, she could hardly refuse such a simple request, no matter how much she wished to avoid Kit Stirling.

  “Of course, sir. I will be happy to do so.”

  Which was how she found herself entering the library that afternoon, despite her awareness that repeated exposure to Temptation Personified was not a good idea.

  He was sitting on the divan by the window, a book open on his lap but his gaze directed out over the garden behind the manor.

  “I’ve been sent by our host to entertain you,” she said.

  He smiled at her. “Then I must thank him for the pleasure of your company.”

  A polite and gentlemanly thing to say, and his smile was warm but lacking any hint of wickedness. For a moment, she was taken off guard, as if he’d changed overnight into a completely different man. But that wasn’t quite right; ever since his accident, there’d been something different in his behavior. He did not seem like the same coarse man she’d first met.

  He was adept at charm, she reminded herself. For some reason, he’d decided it suited him to be gentlemanly at the moment.

  She didn’t feel entirely comfortable with this judgment of him, but it was better for her if she forgot that he had the capacity to be tender and noble.

  A handsome chess set stood nearby, and she proposed a game. He agreed, and she arranged the board in easy reach of where he sat and prepared, with a little private glee, to best him. She was quite good at chess and had played often with Harold.

  Fifteen minutes later, Kit had taken her queen, and she was forced to surrender.

  “You are too hasty in your decisions, Your Grace,” he told her, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth. “You would do better if you allowed yourself more time to consider all your options before making your move.”

  “I am well aware of how to play chess.”

  His eyes danced with mirth. “Yes, I expect you are and that you’re accustomed to winning often. I also suspect that you didn’t think I’d be particularly good at the game, because it requires patience and persistence and intelligence, and you think I have little to recommend me beyond a pretty face.”

  She scoffed, though she was also struggling not to laugh. “If I do”—she turned her attention to collecting the chess pieces—“perhaps that’s because I know little else about you than how you look and what the London gossip has told me.”

  “That’s not entirely true, Your Grace. You’ve had a chance to form your own opinion of me.”

  That was true. She knew what it was like to be with him now, which was something no one could have told her. She knew how to make him laugh, and that he bore suffering cheerfully. And she knew that he had come to Rose Heath to avoid his cousin’s engagement party.

  “Well,” she said, taking her time putting a pawn in its own velvet-lined recess in the chess box, “I know nothing of your family, or where you come from, or why you prefer to live in such a way that people call you the Wastrel of White Horse Street.”

  She didn’t expect him to answer, but he surprised her.

  “I was the happy, only child of two very good people, who died of consumption when I was twelve,” he said, handing her several knights to stow away. “My uncle, the Earl of Roswell as you know, had no heir, only a baby daughter born after years of barrenness. He became my guardian when my parents died and welcomed me into his household.”

  She put the last of the pieces in the box and latched the lid. “And you have repaid him by living as a wastrel?”

  He remained silent for several long moments. “I was, in fact, a very dutiful nephew to the earl for half a dozen years, and I was deeply grateful to learn all he had to teach me about the responsibilities that would one day be mine. He was good to me, as was my aunt, and I was fond of them both and of my cousin Kate.

  “All might have gone on that way had I not discovered a packet of letters to the earl, written to him by my father, his younger brother, begging for help. My uncle liked for people to see to their own affairs, to do the right thing, and to take the narrow path of righteousness. Uncle was unforgiving about mistakes.”

  All trace of the laughing rogue she knew was gone, replaced by a man who spoke respectfully of duty and gratitude. “Your father had made mistakes,” she guessed.

  He had turned his head toward the hearth, but she didn’t think he was seeing the fire. “My father was not careful or sensible with money, and he’d borrowed large amounts from my uncle with the expectation that the money would be for repairs to our home. But my father used the money for more immediate purposes, for dinner parties and horses and clothes. He loved poetry and art and music, and he loved to entertain.

  “I believe he always meant to pay the money back out of his yearly income, but when both he and my mother became sick with consumption, he still had not repaid the loans, and his letters to my uncle, begging for funds to help us, went unanswered.”

  “Oh,” she said. “It’s hard to believe anyone could be so unforgiving and hard-hearted.”

  Bleakness darkened his eyes when he finally returned her gaze. “I had benefited from my uncle’s largesse, while my parents had been left to die.”

  “But you didn’t know at the time, did you, about the dealings between your father and your uncle?”

  “No. But at eighteen, when I found out, I believed that I should have known. There had been such a lack of warmth between them, and my father had frequently referred to his brother as ‘the old skinflint.’ My Uncle had been nothing but kind to me, and I had dismissed what my father said about him.” His voice developed a hard edge. “I had disbelieved my own father.”

  She began to see. She envisioned Kit as he must have been, a decent and good young man who’d loved and lost his parents and benefitted from advantages he wished they could have had. “You confronted your uncle.”

  “Yes. He said, ‘Your father was useless. Be grateful fate offered you a better life than you would have had with him.’”

  “What a thing to say! Surely he didn’t mean it.”

  “I assure you he did. We had a fantastic row, and I left that same day, determined to rely no further on my uncle. I sought out my father’s old friends, who welcomed me. And I discovered that there is more than one way to live one’s life.”

  “But your uncle spoke out of anger. People say terrible things out of anger, things they don’t truly mean.”

  She had closed the chess box, but now he toyed with the latch, lifting it and pressing it closed again a few times before abandoning it with a shrug. “It was a long time ago. It makes no difference now.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Well,” he said, and rubbed his hands together, “where’s that book of sermons?”

  She blinked. “That was an abrupt change of topic.”

  He chuckled, all traces of seriousness banished. “Agreed. But that was ancient history. Surely you have something to read to me that will have my ears burning, a sermon on forgiveness, or perhaps something about temperance?”

  He wanted to keep things light.
She suspected he’d become very good at that in recent years. But she’d glimpsed the vulnerability behind his easy charm, and she no longer believed that was all there was to him. “I don’t particularly wish to read from a book of sermons,” she said.

  “But you will read something to me? I should consider myself fortunate if you would.”

  He sounded as though he sincerely wished her to read to him. She wasn’t certain she was prepared to contend with a sincere Kit.

  “Very well.” She plucked a volume off the table near the settee. “Poetry, then. Alexander Pope. And no complaining, as you have brought this on yourself.”

  He sat serenely with his leg propped on the stool, his hands folded in his lap and, for all she could tell, listened. When she closed the book half an hour later and announced that she must repair to her chamber to write a letter, he thanked her for visiting with him and made no move to press her to stay or to touch her.

  He behaved, in short, like a perfect gentleman.

  As she left the room, she admitted to herself that she was disappointed he’d not tried to steal a kiss. Very disappointed.

  It was all most disconcerting.

  Chapter Nine

  * * *

  The following morning, Olivia decided that she would visit Kit briefly, in accordance with Stratton’s request, and then she would take herself off somewhere out of the vicinity of Temptation Personified. But when Olivia entered the library, Kit was not sitting on the settee with his leg propped up as he had been for the last day and a half.

  She experienced a stab of worry as she looked around the empty room. What if he’d gotten up and fallen somewhere? Or perhaps he’d fallen in his chamber and was in need of help, she thought with rising concern, before she reminded herself that he was a grown man and not in need of her ministrations. Even if he were lying somewhere on the floor in terrible pain, he could still call out for help.

  Unless he’d hit his head.

  As she was having these thoughts in the library doorway, the butler appeared and told her that Mr. Stirling awaited her outside.

  “He does?” she asked, but the butler merely replied, “Indeed,” and escorted her to the front door.

  Two horses stood in the drive. Kit was atop one of them, the handsome gray she remembered from the first day. He was attired smartly in a dark blue riding coat and looking not at all like a man who’d recently suffered a very bad sprain. The other horse, a chestnut mare, was improbably bedecked with a lovely garland of large white flowers around her neck.

  Olivia descended the steps. “What on earth are you doing? You are supposed to be resting your leg.”

  “I have, despite your gracious ministrations, reached the limit of my capacity to sit in a room for hours on end. So I am going for a ride, which, as I’m sure you will allow, will not much strain my ankle. I was hoping you would join me.”

  Something fluttered in her chest at his words, but she paid it no attention. “Where did you get all these flowers?”

  “I did not steal them,” he said dryly, “if that’s what you are wondering.”

  She hadn’t exactly framed it that way in her mind, but still.

  His expression turned gleeful. “You think I’ve committed some horrible crime in the greenhouse, don’t you?”

  “Well, you did kill that poor infant plant the other day, poking away at it with the trowel. You have not so far shown yourself to be very solicitous of the welfare of plants.”

  His horse took a few nervous steps, and he effortlessly calmed the animal. “I cannot argue with the suggestion that I have not always been solicitous of the welfare of plants, but in this case I am innocent. Stratton said I could help myself.”

  The mare looked remarkably pretty with the garland of flowers around her neck, and a ripple of pleasure ran through Olivia because Kit had arranged this for her. “Well, that is good news, I suppose. At least there will not have to be a great drama between you and Stratton.”

  “Indeed. Will you come for a ride, then?”

  “Er—” she began, thinking of all the reasons she ought not to go for a ride with Kit, starting with the fact that she liked the sound of his voice and the way he made jokes at his own expense, never mind the way his jacket stretched across his shoulders.

  “Surely you don’t want Buttercup to feel that she’s gotten all dressed up for nothing,” he said.

  Buttercup tossed her mane, as if to punctuate his words. The morning was sparkling with sunlight and not too cool, the early spring air fresh on Olivia’s cheeks. It would be a fine morning for a ride, she told herself, ignoring the fading voice of her conscience.

  “I’m not dressed to ride,” she pointed out.

  “It will only take you a few minutes to change. I can have the groom walk her in the meantime.”

  “Very well, thank you. A ride sounds appealing.” She smiled. “I’ll go put on my habit.”

  She was doing that too much, she told herself a short time later as they walked the horses to the path at the west of the manor. Smiling at Kit. Laughing with him. Enjoying his company. He was the Wastrel of White Horse Street.

  Yet, she had ceased to look on him that way. He was a man, as full of complexities as any person, and he could not be dismissed with a summation of a few words.

  He had become appealing to her—terribly appealing—this man who gambled frequently and fought questionable duels and surrounded himself with low company. Yet, none of those statements was as simple as it sounded. Still, had she been looking for male companionship, she would never have chosen such a man.

  And did it really matter anyway if she now liked him? If the day seemed sunnier because she was with him? She would be staying only a few more days at Rose Heath, and then she and her friends would leave, and she’d be unlikely ever to see Kit Stirling again. They hardly moved in the same circles, and even if she went to Town, she was unlikely to attend the sorts of events he would like.

  Being with him was almost safe, she told herself, because nothing, ultimately, could come of it. So what did it matter if she liked talking to him? This time was just a holiday.

  They cantered in silence for some time, and she did not at first notice that they hadn’t spoken until it occurred to her that the silence was pleasant. It was, in fact, quite companionable.

  * * *

  “You ride well,” he called out to her as they passed over a meadow. “But then, what should one expect from a duchess?”

  She shot him a scolding look. “You’re not meant to give me away by shouting out my title, sir!” The wind had tugged a few long strands of her brown hair loose, and they rippled on the wind and swirled around her head, giving her the enchanting look of a slightly feral forest nymph. Had he once told himself her hair was the color of dead leaves? He’d been wrong. Her hair was rich molasses, and it glinted with gold in the sunshine.

  “There’s no one to hear,” he shouted back. “We can say anything.”

  She rode on a moment, then threw back her head and shouted, “I hate salmon!”

  “What?”

  “Darkest secrets!” she shouted. “I hate salmon. When people serve it, I say my doctor forbids me to eat it!”

  He laughed, catching on. “Old people bore me!”

  “You’re terrible!” she called out, but she was laughing. “I told my cousin Harriett that I wasn’t free for her to come for a visit, but I was!”

  “Shocking woman!” he shouted into the wind. “I taught a friend’s child a rude word! Mostly an accident!”

  She was still laughing as they approached the little woods that led to the pond, though they were coming from a different direction than she had taken the day she’d found him, and perhaps she didn’t recognize where they were.

  They walked the horses along a pretty path lined with little blue flowers and the bright green shoots of early spring grass. The day was a little cool, but not so chilly as it had been, and it was easy to feel in the softening of the wind that warm days were just around
the bend. They emerged from the shelter of the trees, and he saw the moment when she realized where they were.

  “Oh, it’s the pond.” Her eyes held the gleam of suspicion. “Did you know the path led here?”

  “You needn’t look as though I mean to throw you in. I thought you liked it before, when you came. You went right to the edge and dipped your toes, I believe.”

  “So I did,” she said slowly. “It took about all the courage I had to approach the water. And then you startled me.”

  “But you didn’t fall in. Or at least, only a little.”

  “Very well, I admit that I came near a pond and nothing truly disastrous happened. A small victory of sorts.”

  “I feel I deserve most of the credit for that victory,” he teased. “After all, I brought you to the plunge pool to begin with.”

  Her eyelids lowered in ducal haughtiness that was somewhat diminished by a quiver of her lips. “I should not wish to take credit for someone’s near-drowning, if I were you.”

  “I would never have let you drown, Duchess.” Their horses were moving very slowly now as they approached the boathouse. “I take it that what happened when you were a girl was quite serious?”

  “Terrifying. But do you know what the most awful part was? That no one noticed. Several of my sisters were there, along with my parents, who were squabbling. I sank under the water with the sky bright blue above me and the muted voices and laughter of my family mingling with the panicked pounding of my heart. They had forgotten me, and I was going to die alone.”

  She laughed a little. “Or so I believed until one of the stable boys dove in and rescued me. He’d noticed I was missing, though I never knew why.”

  “Perhaps because he liked you. I imagine you were kind to him. You are unfailingly considerate, as I have had proof when you visited me, though you little wished to.”

  “Only because Stratton asked me to. Though perhaps the visiting was not entirely onerous for me. Perhaps I found you somewhat diverting.”