“The duchess did warn me that could happen, but she also said it’s unlikely on the river. Sailing on the ocean is the real worry. But just in case, she said I should eat several soda crackers the moment we come on board. And she assured me that if I were to become ill, the ship would dock immediately. You will come, won’t you?”
“The important question is: Do you need me to come?”
“It isn’t that. There shan’t be any other guests, I’m told. Just us and the family, and I shall do well enough in their company, now that I’ve come to know them a little. Lady Angela and Lady Sarah are ever so nice. But you ought to come, too.”
Irene was tempted. Sailing on a yacht, with a nice deck chair and a champagne cup and the river rolling by, sounded just as delightful now as it had yesterday. And how often would she have the chance for such an excursion? Before she could decide, however, Clara spoke again.
“There is another thing you should know. Torquil has called on Ellesmere, and the viscount has agreed to be at Kew for luncheon at the same time as we. His home, I’m told, is very near there, at Brentford, so Kew shall be an easy distance for him. He has promised to bow when he sees us, making the acknowledgement.”
Irene snorted. “How good of him. I know, I know,” she added as Clara started to speak. “I understand how these things are done. First the bow, then the introduction, then the calls, then the invitations . . . I comprehend it all. It’s just . . .” Her voice trailed off and she sighed, remembering Torquil’s words from breakfast. “Oh, Clara, I’m just so devilishly proud. I hate that a man who never took any notice of us is now inclined to do so because a peer of higher rank has asked him to.”
“I know. But if our grandfather bows to us, will it be so very hard for you to return it?”
“Oh, terribly,” she said with cheer. “I shall do it, of course, for your sake.”
Her sister smiled, making the sacrifice to her pride a small one. “Then it’s settled, and you will come sailing with us?”
“I suppose I have to, now. Josie can handle things for one day.”
“Couldn’t you take more time than that? Say . . . two weeks?”
Torquil’s words from the night before rang through her mind again. “Do I . . .” She paused and swallowed, finding it hard to ask the question she wanted to ask, afraid to hear the answer. “Does it embarrass you that I intend to keep on with the paper while we are here?”
“Embarrass me? Oh, no.”
“But what about afterward? If things go well, you are hoping I won’t continue it, aren’t you? You’d be happy to see me give it up altogether.”
“I have not thought that far ahead. I am just enjoying myself. And the only thing I know is that I would prefer it if you took some time to enjoy yourself while you have the chance. Lady David is right, you know. To have a foot in both worlds, even for two weeks, will be exhausting.”
Irene made a face. “Lady David is all the more incentive for me to find a way to change his mother’s mind so I can be gone from here. But either way, you needn’t worry about your future. If I fail, Ellesmere will have accepted us. If I succeed, Torquil still has to pay Papa a portion of money, all of which will go to provide a dowry for you. Don’t argue,” she added as her sister started to protest, “for my mind is made up.”
“But it sounds as if the duchess’s mind is made up, too, Irene. I don’t see how you’ll ever persuade her.”
Suddenly, an idea flashed through Irene’s mind like a bolt of lightning, a solution so profoundly simple, she was stunned she hadn’t thought of it straightaway.
“That’s just it,” she said with a jolt of excitement. “I’ve been looking at this situation the wrong way around. The duchess doesn’t need to be persuaded of anything.”
Clara stared at her, looking understandably bewildered. “I don’t under—”
“It won’t be an easy thing to manage,” she murmured, her thoughts racing as her idea took shape. “But it’ll be much easier on my conscience. It’ll take time, though.” She paused, musing. “How am I to find that?”
“As I’ve just been trying to tell you, you could take the time. A two-week holiday—”
“A holiday? By heaven, you are absolutely right. A holiday is just what I need.” Irene chuckled at her sister’s obvious bafflement. “You will be delighted to know that I’ve changed my mind. I won’t be working as much as I had intended. I’ll have to return home for an hour or so each day, of course, just to be sure things are running smoothly and Papa hasn’t converted the newspaper office back into a library during our absence, but other than that, I will hand things over to Josie for the next two weeks, and spend the remainder of my time moving in society with you.”
“You will?”
“Yes. And I shall also be making my best effort to be nicer to the duke.” She couldn’t help laughing at her sister’s stupefied expression. “I must. It’s the only thing to do, don’t you see?”
It was plain that Clara didn’t. She was looking utterly fogged.
Irene laughed again and gave her sister a smacking kiss on each cheek. “And you are the one who has made me realize it. Oh, Clara, you’re brilliant!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but . . .” Clara paused, yawning. “But I fear you’ll have to explain it all in the morning, for I am going to bed. And after working all day, you should go to bed, too,” she added as she gathered up her discarded clothes and started toward her own room.
“I will, I will,” Irene agreed, but her mind was still racing even after she had slipped on a nightgown and slid between the sheets of her bed. The clock ticked seconds and minutes as she stared up at the ceiling, trying to determine her best approach.
It was going to be every bit as difficult as the course Torquil had intended her to take, perhaps even more so. But, in following it, her conscience would be clear, for she wouldn’t be interfering with another woman’s happiness, and she wouldn’t be going against what she still felt had been correct advice.
But how to manage it? Irene turned on her side, considering. It would be like scaling a Nordic glacier. Not impossible, perhaps, but by no means easy.
That was the challenge of it, but though Irene was seldom intimidated by anything, even she had to admit she found this particular challenge a bit daunting. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more daunting it became, making her even less inclined for sleep.
Finally, Irene gave up. Whether it was the idea racing through her mind, or the rich food she’d consumed, or the excitement of the evening, she was just not sleepy. Flinging back the covers, she got out of bed. Perhaps a book would help, she thought as she lit a lamp. Something deadly dull. Fordyce’s Sermons, perhaps, or an unedited version of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Those would put anybody to sleep.
She replaced her nightdress with a tea gown, just in case the hall boy wasn’t asleep at his post, then she picked up the lamp, and left her room, padding down the corridor in bare feet.
She needn’t have worried about the hall boy, for he was bent sideways in his chair by the stairs, eyes closed and mouth open, snoring quietly. She tiptoed past him and down to the floor below, but as she turned into the corridor where the library was located, the faint light pouring through the doorway of that room told her she was not the only person in the house who was still awake.
Irene stopped, hesitant. It wasn’t, she knew, quite the thing to be wandering about at this hour. Oh the other hand, she was already here, and she did not want to go back up and stare at the ceiling for the rest of the night.
Irene resumed walking, but when she reached the library, she was forced to halt again when she found that the very glacier she intended to climb in the morning was squarely in front of her right now.
Torquil was facing the doorway, seated at his writing desk and composing a letter, just as he had been the evening before, though less formally attired in a smoking jacket and shirt instead of dinner suit and white tie. Preoccupied with his task, he
had not yet noticed her standing there, and she knew she ought to turn around before he did. It was the middle of the night. She was supposed to be in bed. This wasn’t proper.
She moved to turn away, but the very movement caught his attention and he looked up.
He went utterly still, and something very much like dismay came into his face. That, she feared, did not bode well. She ought to go, but his gaze seemed to pin her in place.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she blurted out. “I came down for a book.”
He stood up, and if he felt any dismay at the sight of her, it vanished at once, replaced by polite disinterest. “Miss Deverill,” he said and bowed.
She cleared her throat. “I hope I’m not disturbing you?”
“Not at all,” he said, and stretched out his arm toward the bookshelves lining the walls behind him, inviting her to help herself to any book she might wish.
She hesitated, knowing she had two choices. She could mumble some terribly lame excuse and duck out like a frightened rabbit, or she could begin climbing that glacier. Irene lifted her chin, took a deep breath, and started forward.
Chapter 12
Henry had never been the sort to believe in fate. Destiny, he’d always felt, was in one’s own hands, by choice of will, with perhaps a bit of divine assistance from time to time. Tonight, however, with Irene Deverill standing before him in her loose-fitting gown, her gold hair falling around her shoulders, he began to fear that will was useless and the divine had a damnable sense of what was helpful.
After his walk last evening, he’d slept a good night and woken this morning sure he was back on solid footing. Even at breakfast with her, he’d been well enough, and throughout the morning, he’d been able to keep the image of her stunning face, lit with laughter, out of his mind for almost the entire day. But then, he’d arranged the water party and wondered if she would like sailing. He’d called on Ellesmere, a feat which had forced him to talk about her. Worse, he’d then gone to Merrick’s and chosen her a maid, an act which had led his imagination to images of her dressing and undressing, very shaky ground indeed, and he’d decided it would be best if he did not attend the theater with them this evening. Given his desire for her, steering clear was his only honorable course.
Denied that just now, he forced his face into the polite, disinterested expression required of a civilized gentleman and stood up. “Miss Deverill,” he said and bowed, but as he did, he caught sight of her bare toes peeking out beneath cerise pink silk, and his body at once began a rebellion against civility. He jerked upright.
She gave a slight cough. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
Disturbed, he supposed, was one way of describing how he felt. “Not at all,” he lied and forced himself to remember what she’d come for. He turned slightly, again inviting her to peruse the bookshelves.
She walked past him, and as he turned, he prepared to excuse himself and escape before his much-too-vivid imagination led him to more agony, or worse, to actions he would regret.
“I’m glad to have run across you, actually,” she said. “This might be an excellent moment for us to talk.”
“Talk?” That impossible notion spurred him to action. He dredged up his honor, and prepared an excuse—the lateness of the hour and how tired he was. But when he turned around, excuses to leave went straight out of his head.
She was bending down, perusing the lowest shelves, the lamp on the floor nearby. He froze, staring at the unmistakable outline of her hips and buttocks, plainly visible through the thin layer of pink silk, making him fully aware that she had nothing on underneath. No petticoats, no drawers, no . . .
Oh, God, have mercy.
Riveted, he stared, arousal rising and fortitude cracking. “It sounds as if you have something important you wish to discuss.”
“It can wait, if you prefer. It’s just that . . .” She bent down a little farther, stretching to reach a book, and he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. “This meeting is rather fortuitous.”
“Fated, you might say,” he said as he crossed the room toward her, his gaze on her hips, his thoughts in the gutter.
“Exactly.” She straightened and turned toward him as he paused beside her. “Everyone else is in bed, so we won’t be overheard.”
The baser side of Henry’s nature was already well aware of that point. “And what you want to discuss is a forbidden subject?”
For some reason, that made her laugh. “Forbidden? Oh, no. It’s just that it’s easier to discuss your mother with you if there’s no chance she can overhear.”
“My mother?” He felt as if he’d just been doused with ice water. “You want to talk about my mother?”
Talking, particularly about his mother, seemed ludicrous just now, but it was a much safer topic than the one he’d been contemplating. Not knowing whether to be relieved or disappointed by that fact, Henry tamped down lust and resigned himself to conversation. “What about her?”
“It’s really Foscarelli I want to know more about. You’ve met him, I trust?”
Startled, he blinked. “What on earth gave you that idea?”
“Well . . . I assumed it. You did tell me you tried to buy him off.”
“So I did. Through my solicitors.”
“Solicitors?” She stared at him, shaking her head and giving a laugh as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“That amuses you, Miss Deverill?”
“Your assessment of this man’s character and suitability are based on what you have heard, not what you have concluded from your own knowledge and experience. You condemn my poor paper for engaging in gossip when it’s about your family, yet, you seem able to embrace gossip wholeheartedly when it’s about someone you don’t wish to like. A bit hypocritical, don’t you think?”
“That is ridiculous.”
“Is it? You profess to despise rumor and innuendo, and yet those criteria seem to form the entire basis of your opinion of the man.”
“And?”
“Don’t you think you should meet him for yourself before you judge his character?”
“I cannot do that.” The very idea appalled him. “It isn’t possible.”
She laughed again, lifting her hands in a gesture of bafflement. “Why not?”
“We have never been introduced. No introduction has been offered to me on his behalf, and if it were, I should refuse it. Even my mother would not suggest it.”
She made a sound of impatience and turned her attention back to the bookshelves. “You aristocrats and your rules,” she muttered as she pulled a volume halfway out and glanced at the title. “So damnably silly.”
“Perhaps they seem so to you, but they exist nonetheless, and I must follow them, for unlike you, I am unwilling to suffer the consequences of not doing so.”
She shoved the book back into place and turned to him again. “How did your mother meet him, then, if these rules are so important?”
“She wanted her portrait painted. She commissioned him. Then she decided to have him teach her to paint in oils. One thing led to another, and here we are.”
“She was attracted to him and she wanted a fling, you mean.” She laughed. “How delightfully naughty of her. Oh, Duke, I do like your mother!”
“I’m gratified to hear it, but I don’t see what is delightful about having a fling.”
Even as he said it, he knew how idiotic that comment was. So did she.
“Don’t you?” Her hazel eyes sparkled with mischief. “Don’t you, really?”
He stiffened, sensing danger to his newly acquired equanimity, and he feared he was every bit the hypocrite she’d accused him of being as desire for her flickered to life again. “I would prefer not to discuss the circumstances of my mother’s fling, if you don’t mind. She is, after all, my mother.”
“It’s terribly romantic, isn’t it?” Miss Deverill went on, oblivious to his request for a change of subject. “Having a fling, and then falling in love.”
“I don
’t see how,” he mumbled, shifting his weight, keenly uncomfortable with this topic. “Since one can hardly call it love.”
She sighed. “I fail to see how your mother could ever think you a hopeless romantic.”
Henry couldn’t see it either, for his thoughts about the woman in front of him were anything but. His gaze slid down, his body began to burn. “The material point,” he said, jerking his gaze back up to her face, “is that no conversation between Foscarelli and myself can take place. Propriety forbids it.” As he spoke, he was well aware of how haughty he sounded, but it seemed his only refuge at the moment. “I suppose you think me overly fastidious.”
She pulled out another book, opened it, and began to scan the pages. “That’s one way of putting it.”
That dry rejoinder, a reminder of his so-called hypocrisy, raised his defenses at once. “Foscarelli is a rake of the first water, with many feminine conquests. He is also, to put it crudely, on the make. If I allow myself to be introduced to him, I send a message to the world that I approve of such behavior. I cannot do that. And even if I did meet him,” he went on as she opened her mouth to argue, “it would hardly change my opinion. If a man has behaved like a wolf, if he has preyed like a wolf, and feasted like a wolf, does it matter if he baas and bleats to me as if he were a sheep?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said in exasperation and snapped the book closed, “this man may soon be a member of your family.”
“I would prefer not to be reminded of that possibility, a possibility, I might add, that you are supposed to be helping me prevent from becoming reality.”
She made a face and put the book away. “That’s proving somewhat difficult, as you might imagine. You are her son. If your efforts to persuade her against this course have failed, I’m not sure what you expect me to do.”
“Point out his flaws, stress his reputation. Urge caution. You are Lady Truelove’s editor. One might infer you are also her confidante. Stress your friendship with your columnist and her trust in you. That might persuade Mama to listen.”
The Truth About Love and Dukes Page 17