Constantine shifted his weight uneasily on his feet. It felt too soon to propose. Certainly more time was required than the few months he had been acquainted with Lady Elise. Winston had died scarcely a year ago. He knew the Birchwoods were anxious to see their line secured. They wanted him married and a child en route . . . but this was rash even for them. There were standards of mourning to be considered. The black crepe might have been removed a month ago, but it still felt hasty.
And yet Birchwood was an exalted peer. He had the ear of the queen. If anyone frowned on his actions, they would keep all opinions to themselves. In fact, crusty old peers of Birchwood’s ilk were likely urging him to get Constantine hitched posthaste.
Lady Elise was an amenable young lady, but he sensed a certain reserve in her. He was not convinced she was receptive to his suit. For all the time they had spent in each other’s company, she still felt like a stranger to him.
He rather thought it might always be that way. Were he to marry her, he would wake up in twenty years and still know her no better than he did now. They would be kind, dispassionate partners living together and yet detached from one another.
Not like Nora Langley. Dispassionate could never be a word applied to her. He’d been in her company only a few occasions, and he felt as though they had many more encounters between them. That was probably a result of uncovering her deceit. Once someone was revealed to be a devious fraud, were there really any barriers left?
“Do you know who stands to inherit following you? If you do not bring forth issue? Do you?” Birchwood demanded, his eyes looking a little wild. “Who is next in line after you?”
Con shook his head, alarmed at the directness of Birchwood’s questioning, to say nothing of his agitation. Such forthrightness was so very uncharacteristic, so very unaristocratic of him, and Birchwood was every inch the blue-blooded noble.
“My solicitors are not definite, but they believe they tracked the next in line to Argentina. They’ve sent an agent to ferret out some distant relation who settled in Buenos Aires over fifty years ago to see if he’s still alive or has any issue on the off chance you should not come up to scratch. Can you imagine?” he sputtered. “I did my duty and now my legacy is left in such doubt.”
Constantine cleared his throat uneasily, feeling the burden of responsibility so keenly. He did not know they had sent an agent to Argentina. “You may rest easy, Your Grace. There is no doubt,” he promised. “I’ll do my duty.”
Birchwood peered at him long and hard before reaching for his arm and giving it another squeeze. “Don’t fail me, lad. I’ve had too much disappointment in my life. Far too much. I don’t need to see all of this”—his gaze lifted to the ceiling and surrounding room—“go to a stranger.” He released a heavy sigh, his shoulders slumping a bit. “And unless I want to endure my dear wife’s disappointment tonight, I’d best get dressed for dinner.”
“Quite so.” Con nodded, glad for the end to the awkward conversation.
Together they departed the office and made their way to their separate rooms.
Chapter 11
Nora had to admit it. Bea knew what she was about when it came to dressing a lady.
Nora’s hair had never looked so fine as it did now, piled atop her head in loose waves with two fat ringlets falling to drape over her bare shoulder. No wonder Bea had been so distressed to find herself Nora’s maid. She’d been idle under Nora. It was a waste of her many talents.
She’d never worn the peach gown before so had not thought to protest when Bea chose to pack it—or chose to lay it out for this evening.
Now she knew she should have protested.
In fact, she should have better surveyed all the gowns Bea had selected for the trip. Naturally, she had pulled from the new wardrobe Nora acquired upon Marian marrying Warrington. They were all gorgeous clothes, much more fashionable than anything she ever wore. Nora ignored most of them, preferring her old familiar dresses.
Bea had packed none of those. Of course.
Staring at her reflection, she tugged at the bodice cutting into the swells of her breasts. “Is it possible that I’ve . . . grown since last fitted for this dress?”
Bea straightened from where she bent over, Nora’s day dress in her arms. “Most definitely. That was well over a year ago.”
Nora turned the scowl from her own reflection to Bea.
Bea pointed at each of her swelling breasts. “Those have definitely grown.”
She shook her head. “I can’t wear this!”
“You’ve nothing else to wear and it’s perfectly appropriate. Fashions are a little more daring in Town. You’re not going to raise any eyebrows.”
She gripped her bodice with two hands and fought to tug the neckline higher, jumping lightly on the balls of her feet.
Bea swatted her hands away. “Stop that. You’ll tear the fabric.”
She worried if she bent over in the slightest she might burst free. “This is unendurable,” she muttered, trying to stuff the swelling flesh deeper inside her gown.
“Leave them alone and hurry now. You don’t want to be late.” Bea started tidying up the bedchamber. “Walk straight. No hunkering over.”
Nora doubted she could manage that, but she would try. She was usually a confident individual who walked with her shoulders pulled back and her chest thrust out, her stride purposeful because she always knew her direction and what she was about.
But walking with her chest thrust out simply felt too dangerous. To do so, she risked exposing herself, and she was already a little out of her depth tonight. Dinner parties weren’t her strong suit. It wouldn’t do to bare herself in front of London’s finest.
She left Bea tidying her chamber and departed the room, soaking in Bea’s words, letting them fortify her as, alone in the corridor, she took a moment to lean back against her bedchamber door. The gown is not daring by London standards. The gown is not daring by London standards.
She pressed her palms flat against the door, using the time to gather her composure for the dinner that loomed ahead and reminding herself that she did far more difficult or unpleasant things all the time. It could not be any worse than excising a boil or drawing an infection out from a toenail.
“Miss Langley?”
Her head snapped up, her gaze searching the length of the corridor and landing on Sinclair.
“Good eve, Mr. Sinclair.” She lifted away from her bedchamber door, smoothing her hands down the front of her skirts.
He approached at a sedate pace, his tread muffled on the runner.
Her nerves crackled to life as she faced his advance, his clean masculine scent drifting closer. She had already acknowledged to herself that he was handsome. In a dark, brooding kind of way. He looked especially fine tonight, however, in his black evening attire.
“Going down to dinner?” he inquired. His voice was all politeness, but his gaze was far from well-mannered as it roamed over her.
She resisted covering the exposed flesh of her chest with her hand. The gown is not daring by London standards.
She took Bea’s words, wrapped herself in them and hoped they would console her in this most embarrassing moment, in her height of discomfort. What she wouldn’t do for one of her well-worn, modest and comfortable wool gowns now.
Certainly, that would be its own form of awkwardness—her dining with the most elegant and refined nobility in a brown sack of a dress—but she might actually prefer that to this. To a stare that was decidedly unlascivious.
Although lascivious looks were not his style. She already knew that much of him. He was much too rigid, much too impassive. The army must have bled the emotion from him. Or perhaps he was simply born to be detached and immune to females. Or at least to her.
Perhaps there were other females he would react to with emotion.
Ladies whom he would not look at in distaste when they wore a risqué gown.
That was a rather lowering thought. She almost preferred for him to look at
her with a lascivious leer instead of the way he looked at her now—as though she were something he stepped on and squashed beneath his shoe.
His gaze made its way back to her face.
Perhaps she was being overly sensitive. He’d surveyed her from head to toe in a matter of seconds. It was impossible to know what he was thinking.
“Ah. Yes, I am,” she said.
He stopped before her and offered his arm. “Shall I escort you?”
She hesitated before taking hold of his proffered arm.
Beside him, she looked up and yet did not move. Not quite yet. It felt necessary to speak first—to say what needed to be said . . . what she felt compelled to say.
“Thank you.”
An expression of gratitude was overdue.
He angled his head. “What are you thanking me for, Miss Langley?”
She moistened her lips. “For what you did, what you said to the duke.” She flexed her fingers over his sleeve. “I wouldn’t be here if not for you. Thank you for inviting me.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “Well, it was rather unexpected, I must confess. Until the words escaped my mouth, I did not know I would say them.”
“Then why did you?”
Why did you lie for me?
He looked at her as though that answer were the most obvious thing in the world. “You said you could help the duchess. I’d be foolish not to give you that chance. For her sake, if nothing else.”
For her sake. Of course. It wasn’t because of Nora. It was not because Nora asked him to do it. She was naught but an unwanted factor in all of this. She was here only for the duchess.
“Yes,” she said in a little puff of breath. “Well, thank you. I’m here because of you.”
“You’re here because you barged your way in.” His lips twisted in a semblance of a smile as they started down the corridor.
“Well. I needed your endorsement.” She shrugged. “You gave it.”
“No thanks needed. Help the duchess. That is all that is required.”
Required. No pressure with that.
They proceeded down the corridor. “I spent most of the day with the duchess. She did not exhibit any symptoms. Presently, she seems in fine health.”
“Give it some time. I’ve been told she has been afflicted for well over a year now with this malaise. As much as I wish her suffering would simply stop, I doubt it will.”
“I will be patient then.” Although patience wasn’t her strong suit. She did not sit idle during her days. She certainly did not spend her days working on her needlepoint or as a companion to ladies of mature years. But that’s what she would be doing as she waited for the duchess to get sick again.
“I’m sure she appreciates your company. She is accustomed to a vigorous social life. That has changed since she lost her sons and since the onset of this infirmity.”
They descended the stairs.
“Has anyone thought whether her affliction has to do with the grief of losing her sons?”
“Possible, I suppose. I did wonder, but the timing does not seem significant. Her pains started before the death of her sons, after all. And when her grief was the most intense after losing Winston she was not afflicted during that time at all.”
Her grief did not appear to be a trigger for her condition then.
They stopped before the drawing room doors. “Ready?”
She turned to face him. “It’s just a dinner party,” she said as though she attended dinner parties with nobles all the time and not just with her sisters and Warrington, the world’s most unnoble noble. She had never felt any pressure or anxiety in Warrington’s company.
This dinner, she suspected, would be different.
She would be dining with a duke and a duchess who fully acted the part. At least her day with the duchess had made her more comfortable in that august lady’s company. The duke was another story. She had scarcely spent any time with him, but she did not think he took her very seriously. Actually, she doubted that he took her any way at all. He was a man at the top of his world. She was merely a female, and not one of particular note as she was without rank or wealth or name or great beauty.
She knew from Bea, who had proven herself to be quite the fount of information, that Lady Elise would be in the company of her aunt, the Dowager Marchioness of Cheswick. The other guests would be the duke and duchess’s dear friends, the Baron and Baroness Loftin.
It was a strange thing to consider that she would be the only one at the table who was of humble origins. Even Sinclair. He might be a mister right now, but he was the Birchwood heir. That was his destiny. No one would ever look at him or treat him as a plain mister again. He was more, better as far as the rest of the world was concerned.
He held the door for her and waved her within to the “just a dinner party” that waited.
Chapter 12
Lady Elise was as lovely as purported to be. The Birchwood staff had not exaggerated that fact to Bea.
Apparently rank and wealth were not blessings enough. Beauty had been bestowed upon her as well. Halfway through dinner it was further established—she was as kind as she was charming. No human should be so blessed.
Sinclair sat taciturn, replying when spoken to, but rarely engaging in the conversation . . . and certainly not to the lively degree of Lady Elise. Nora acknowledged they would be well matched. Lady Elise would make up for his reserve with her vivacious spirit.
The young woman engaged Nora in conversation, inquiring after Nora’s interest in what she called “the herbal arts.” She did not even look bored as Nora explained to her the various uses rosemary served that had nothing to do with food.
“I envy you your talent, Miss Langley,” Lady Elise announced as she delicately angled her spoon into her soup bowl.
“Do you?” The dowager marchioness looked mildly affronted.
“Yes,” Lady Elise replied evenly. “I do.”
“I was fortunate to have an excellent teacher in my father,” she replied.
“Ah. Well, there you have it. My father, God rest his soul, was only ever very talented at cards and drink.”
“Elise!” her aunt exclaimed in disapproval.
“Oh, please, Aunt.” Lady Elise rolled her eyes. “Everyone knows it.”
“Yes, well, perhaps, but you needn’t talk about it so openly.” She glanced at Nora with a flare of her nostrils, as though she were responsible for Lady Elise’s forthrightness. “Especially in mixed company.”
Mixed company? Meaning Nora, the peasant in their midst. She fought to maintain a neutral expression in the face of the woman’s sly contempt for her.
Lady Elise shook her head in dismissal of her aunt and focused on Nora again. “Have you considered extending your education so that you might practice more formally?”
“In what way?”
“Why, becoming a doctor yourself,” she said as though that were most obvious—or a simple thing to do.
Nora studied her for a moment, trying to decipher if her question originated from a place of ignorance. Perhaps she truly did not realize the feat of that task. Or perhaps she thought Nora was up for such a monumental task? “Medical schools in Britain refuse admittance to females.”
“Absurd,” Lady Elise exclaimed, her cheeks pink with outrage. Evidently she had not been aware of this imbalance.
Nora could not help but like the woman even more.
“Is it?” the duke inquired mildly as he lifted his glass and took a long sip of wine. “Anatomy and physiology hardly seem appropriate areas of studies for a lady.”
“Hear, hear,” the dowager marchioness seconded. “A refined lady would not sully herself in the field of medicine. How could one even entertain such a notion?” She sent a reproving look to her niece. “Ladies must protect their sensibilities and shroud themselves in the proper trappings of virtuous womanhood.” Her stare turned then and fell rather pointedly on Nora.
“Indeed. Virtuous womanhood must be protected,” the baron pa
rroted as he stuffed his mouth full of meat, his crooked yellow teeth chomping down on the mint-dressed lamb. Juice dribbled down his chin as he chewed. He lifted his napkin to half-heartedly mop up the mess. He didn’t catch it all and brown spots soon appeared on his dress shirt and brocade waistcoat.
Nora cringed at the unattractive sight, wondering who would protect the world from the sight of the baron eating his dinner.
For some reason she felt compelled to look at Sinclair, to see if he appeared to share their opinions on the role of women in medicine.
She assumed he was like-minded given his reaction at discovering she was the true author of her father’s letters. He claimed his outrage was due to her deceit, but she wondered if it was truly over discovering she was a female dispensing medical advice. She suspected he was not broad-minded when it came to women occupying nontraditional roles, and for some reason she felt a keen sense of disappointment in him, which she had no right to feel. He was not family nor friend nor anyone for whom she should feel disappointment.
He stared back at her, his face void of expression. And yet he offered no defense on her behalf and expressed no indignation.
“Poppycock,” Lady Elise offered.
“What say you, Sinclair?” the duke called across the table.
Nora stared at him, waiting, expecting a decided lack of support.
“In the army I observed grisly injuries that I shall not recount here.” He paused, a muscle flickering along his jaw as though caught up in a particular unfortunate memory. She tried not to let that sight of vulnerability within him affect her. She did not want to soften toward him when he so obviously was about to disparage the role of women in medicine. He then resumed speaking. “Innumerable injuries. Some fatal. I stood witness during many a surgery that would unquestionably offend those of delicate constitutions.”
“See there now.” The dowager marchioness bobbed her head in satisfaction. “Delicate constitutions must be shielded.”
The Duke Effect EPB Page 9