“The idiot announcing his perfidy was Sir Prendergast. Emory could not call him out, because they are of such different stations. I suspect that’s all that saved Sir Prendergast’s life. Prendergast was boasting about a young woman’s ruin, all but on the street, as you say. Now you tell me he’s writing to you, probably pilfering his wife’s perfume to disguise his letter. Burn that letter, Antigone, and I will inform the gallant knight that you see his wicked lures for the selfish schemes they are.”
“You are making this up. Sir Prendergast would never say such things about a proper lady. Maybe she wasn’t quite proper. Did you or Emory ever think of that? Not every woman has the scruples I’ve been raised with.”
Stubborn, stubborn, stubborn. “I was there, Antigone. Prendergast didn’t realize he would be overheard by your cousins. He clearly mentioned the lady’s name when he bragged to his cronies.”
The sonata shifted into a minor key, appropriate for the rainy day and this hopeless conversation.
“Sir Prendergast was in love with me,” Antigone whispered. “I know he was, and maybe he still is. He had to marry that woman, and I understand that a gentleman needs means. But he would never have run off with some female just to get his hands on her settlements. You don’t know anything about love because you’re too busy being a… a libertine.”
Said as if libertines were so vile as to exceed even the criminals and sinners filling Dante’s Inferno.
“Antigone, dearest, please believe me when I tell you that it was your name Sir Prendergast bandied about so carelessly. Had anybody other than Emory been present, you would be enjoying a long respite at the family seat under the watchful eye of three aunts, two companions, and a brace of mastiffs. Emory handled the matter quietly for your sake.”
Jeremiah braced himself for an explosion, but Antigone instead went still. “My name? Sir Prendergast bandied my name about in that manner?”
“If you believe nothing else I ever say, please believe I’m being honest with you now. You had a narrow escape.”
She was quiet until the slow movement concluded. When Uncle embarked on a lively trio, Antigone took up her hoop again.
“Maybe Sir Prendergast wrote that awful book. He would hate Emory enough to do such a thing.” She stabbed the fabric with her needle and pulled the thread taut. “Who else would take an incident like that and turn it into a reproach against our duke?”
“Weren’t you just saying Emory was overdue for a set-down?”
“A set-down is one thing, but whoever wrote that book went beyond a set-down. I hope His Grace does find the author and draws his cork too.” She paused in her stitching. “There’s something else you should know.”
“No more secrets, please. I’ve heard my quota for the year in the past quarter hour.” And shared a secret or two as well.
“Well, you can hear one more, because Emory has seen fit to avoid this gathering. I think Her Grace is working on a book. She’s been making lists, consulting her spies, and collecting stories. When we drove out the other day in Hyde Park, she was positively glowing over some tidbit she’d gleaned from Lady Westerfield. The scandals that woman has been privy too would probably fill ten books.”
Jeremiah experienced a sensation that he associated with the early phases of inebriation when the quality of drink was particularly poor. A sense of events spinning beyond his control while he had neither the means nor the will to prevent a looming disaster.
“You think the duchess is working on a book?”
“Who knows. Perhaps she’s penning the much-vaunted sequel to How to Ruin a Duke. Perhaps this version will include some of your exploits as well, Cousin. Won’t that be delightful?”
Lady Edith Charbonneau in the throes of ecstasy, even ecstasy occasioned by one of Cook’s pear tarts, distracted Thaddeus from the purpose of his call.
Steady on, old boy. “What would you give me in exchange for a liberal supply of pear tarts?” he asked, taking a bite of his own sweet.
“You are teasing me,” she replied. “Besides, woman does not live on pear tarts alone.”
“Would you like your previous position back?”
She took up the flask and traced the crest embossed on it. “No, thank you. Two years of being Her Grace’s companion taxed my patience to its limits. Your mother enjoys ordering other people around, and I abhor being told what to do.”
“As do I. If you do not want your former post back, then what could I offer you in exchange for your assistance finding the author of How to Ruin a Duke?”
“You needn’t offer me anything.” She set down the flask without drinking and took up her tart again. “I’m happy to give you what aid I can out of simple decency, though I am at a loss for what insight you expect me to bring to the task. Nonetheless, I re-read portions of the book last night, and some of the incidents recounted cast you in a very unflattering light. My temper is roused on your behalf, Your Grace.”
She sniffed her pear tart, then took a bite from the crust.
Thaddeus rose, because if he remained on the loveseat, he’d be tempted to sniff her. Surely his dignity had gone begging along with his reputation.
“I cannot impose on your time without offering you compensation of some sort. I could sponsor subscriptions to your book of advice, for example, or find you another post as a companion with somebody more agreeable than my mother.” Nearly anybody would be more agreeable than Mama in a fretful mood.
“I haven’t written my advice book yet. I completed an outline and drafted several chapters, but whoever agrees to publish it will doubtless have suggestions regarding the final form of the book.”
The desire to craft an exchange of consideration wasn’t merely fair dealing from a business perspective. Thaddeus needed to know that Lady Edith had some means, that she was safe from desperate measures and desperate men.
“What about your brother, my lady? Shall I buy him a commission? Lord Jeremiah is certainly eager to embrace an officer’s life.” Thaddeus understood and respected his brother’s desire to make his own way, but Mama did not. Then too, Jeremiah was the spare, and a spare’s lot was to wait for an heir of the body to appear.
Lady Edith rose. “No officer’s commission, please. Foster is all the family I have left, though we aren’t even related. He has never expressed any wish to join the military, and I would rather he not perish in the Canadian wilderness.”
“My lady—Edith—I cannot avail myself of your time without—”
She put her hand over his mouth. “Have you never had a friend before, Emory? Friends help each other. I will help you if I can. Come sit with me.” She took him by the hand and led him back to the loveseat.
The novelty of being told to hush and then given an order scrambled Thaddeus’s wits, for he not only obeyed her and resumed his place on the loveseat like a good duke, he also made no pretense of putting distance between his hip and hers.
And neither did she.
“Finish your tart,” he said.
She delivered such a look to him as would have made a lesser man back slowly for the door.
“I beg your ladyship’s pardon. Perhaps you’d consider finishing your tart before we embark on a tedious discussion. I would not want to distract you from your pleasures.” Nor could Thaddeus form a proper thought while watching her consume her sweet. Perhaps the infatuations and flirtations that so violently afflicted Antigone, Jeremiah, and other family members were an inherited trait.
The notion was more encouraging than lowering. Thaddeus stuffed another bite of buttered bread into his mouth and fixed his gaze on the pattern of mock orange boughs on the worn carpet before the hearth.
“Where would you like to start?” her ladyship asked, dusting her hands several long moments later.
“With a list of suspects,” Thaddeus replied. “Preferably a short list, full of people I don’t like and can easily buy off or intimidate.”
“You intimidate nearly all who meet you.” She wrapped up the bre
ad and put the lid on the butter crock. “I shudder for the young ladies who stand up with you for their first waltz.”
“I am competent on the dance floor.” In fact, he enjoyed a vigorous set with an enthusiastic partner.
“You are magnificent but your proportions mean most women struggle to keep up with the sweep and scope of your dancing, especially inexperienced women cowed by your glowers and scowls.”
Thaddeus tore another pear tart in half and held out the larger portion to Lady Edith. He was torn as well, between pleasure that she had watched his magnificent waltzing, and frustration that he’d never asked her to stand up with him.
“I couldn’t possibly eat another bite,” she said, wrapping up the basket of pear tarts and the cheese in another square of linen.
“Liar.” Thaddeus held the tart up to her mouth.
She nibbled, watching him all the while, and his battle against obvious signs of arousal lost ground.
“We will need pencil and paper,” she said, patting her mouth with a table napkin.
I will soon need to stand in the cold rain without my coat. “Excellent idea.” He retrieved those items from the desk as Lady Edith finished tidying up their meal.
“I will put the leftovers in the pantry,” she said, “and you can start on a list of people who have motive to wish you ill, plus literary ability, and enough proximity to you to paint you in a credibly bad light. I’ll be right back.”
“No hurry,” Thaddeus replied. “I fear the list will be quite long.”
And she still hadn’t told him what he could offer her by way of compensation.
The parlor became smaller than ever with His Grace of Emory on the love seat. When he rose to pace, Edith noticed how low the ceiling was, how worn the carpet, and that the water stain where the walls met was growing. But sharing a parlor picnic with him also gave the room a cozy quality, taking off the chill of a dreary afternoon.
Or the food had done that. Good food that had to have come from the ducal kitchen. She recognized the weave of the table napkins, and the flask was embossed with the family crest. A griffin segreant, prepared to do as griffins legendarily did and guard priceless treasures on both land, in the manner of lions, and as the eagles did, from the heavens.
Who guarded Emory’s reputation, and who benefitted from tarnishing it?
“Before we make your list,” Edith said, resuming her place on the loveseat, “can you tell me a bit more about the famous curricle race?”
“The infamous race. What would you like to know?”
“You are not by nature incautious. What possessed you to bet another peer that you could beat him to Brighton in a vehicle you’d never driven before, much less by moonlight?”
The duke held up the plate with half a pear tart. Edith took a bite because she did not want to seem rude.
“I chose to start at moonrise,” he said, “because the roads are less crowded and fewer people would be abroad to witness my folly.”
“Why race at all?”
He helped himself to a bite of the tart. “My dear, idiot brother had bet his new curricle that he could travel the distance to Brighton and beat his opponent, if not the Regent’s record. He must have been half-seas over to make such an asinine wager. Beating the Regent’s time publicly is not the done thing, moreover, Jeremiah had only recently won the curricle in a game of cards. He wasn’t experienced enough to handle such an unstable vehicle at speed, much less in a race.”
This admission was made grudgingly, though Edith could easily picture Lord Jeremiah making a dangerous boast when among his cronies.
“The book depicts the whole incident much differently.” Very differently, with Emory nearly going into the ditch and winning by the slimmest margin. “Did you win?”
“I won the race without besting the Regent’s personal record, though it was a near thing. I did not want Jeremiah to lose a prized possession, but neither could I have the Regent taking us into disfavor.”
“From whom did Lord Jeremiah win the vehicle?”
Emory took another bite of the tart then passed it to her. “Finish this, please. The curricle had been the property of one of his drinking companions who doubtless goaded him into the wager in hopes of recovering the carriage for himself.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Not yet, but I will.” He scribbled something on the paper. “Any more questions?”
“What about the drinking wager?”
“I will never touch another drop of gin for so long as I live, that’s what about the drinking wager. The very recollection makes my head pound and my gut roil.”
“And yet, you won that one too.”
His Grace grumbled out an explanation: A friend of Jeremiah’s had proposed to drink under the table any man holding his vowels in exchange for a return of the IOU. Losing the bet would ruin the fellow, and yet, he was more of a braggart than a drunkard or a Captain Sharp. Emory had accepted the wager, altering the terms such that if the duke could out-drink the other fellow, the duke came into possession of the debts of honor.
“I am a mastodon,” he said, “according to a noted authority, and thus able to hold my liquor. I won the bet and gave the notes of hand to Jeremiah to be collected if and when the fellow could pay.”
Again, very different from what the book had portrayed.
“It’s almost as if,” Edith said, “somebody who had no firsthand knowledge of these incidents colored them all with a fierce resentment for you, and relied on readers also not having any firsthand knowledge to fuel the book’s appeal.”
Emory ranged an arm along the back of the sofa and crossed his feet at the ankles. “One attempts discretion, especially when indulging in rank folly. Those who were witnesses to the lunacy would be unlikely to gossip beyond the masculine confessional of the gentlemen’s club.”
And what was said behind the walls of a gentlemen’s club was not to be repeated elsewhere.
“So we are likely dealing with a woman,” Emory went on. “A woman who hears a lot of male gossip, or can consult with male gossips, but not with the men who were present when I was making such an ass of myself.”
Edith liked watching his mind work, she liked that he’d abandon formal manners with her, and she liked very much sitting beside him when he did. She loathed that his basic decency had been misconstrued by some misanthropic female.
“What woman has cause to be angry with you, besides Miss Antigone?”
The duke’s expression was bleakly amused. “My mother, but then, she’s easily and often vexed. She fits the criteria though: She’s quite literary, she has the ear of half the tattlers in the realm, and she might well think a book of this nature would chivvy me into taking a duchess.”
“Has it?” That was none of Edith’s business, of course, but she wanted Emory to have at least one reliable ally to call his own. When she’d first joined his household, she’d realized that beneath his posturing and consequence, he was a decent fellow.
Even she hadn’t understood how decent.
Emory perused the notes he’d made. “Mama’s novel hasn’t inspired me in the sense she doubtless intended—if she wrote the blasted thing. Who among the young ladies would have taken me into dislike?”
They discussed disappointed hopefuls, matchmakers who might be out of patience with Emory, and wallflowers given to bitterness. That list was troublingly long, though few of the names on it had as much entrée among the gentlemen as a well connected duchess would have.
“A widow, I suppose,” Emory said, rising and stretching. “I have been avoiding them in recent months, not that I was ever much of a gallant in that regard. The hour grows late, but we have made progress. When might I call upon you again?”
Edith arranged her skirts and found a ducal hand extended in her direction. A gentleman typically did assist a lady to rise.
Well. She took his hand, but with the side table still before the loveseat, the confines were cramped. His shaving soap was still evid
ent this close—a subtle blend of woods and spice. The fragrance graced a rainy, chilly day with a note of elegance, and memories of the ease Edith had enjoyed in the ducal household.
When she wasn’t being run off her feet by endless silly demands.
“May I ask you something?” Emory said, peering down at her. The afternoon light was waning, and the rain had slowed to desultory dripping from the eaves.
“You may.”
“Slap me if I give offense, but earlier, when you thought I offered you a proposition of an objectionable nature…”
“I was peckish and out of sorts. You would never—”
He touched a finger to her lips. “If I had, if I’d intimated that I sought a discreet, intimate liaison on terms acceptable to you, would your objection have been to the nature of the relationship, or personally, to the other party involved?”
His dignity was on display, so was his willingness to be dealt a blow, not as a duke, but as a man. Edith became acutely aware of the attraction she’d denied since first watching him turn down the room with this or that marquess’s daughter.
He was a fine specimen, she’d long known that. Now he was revealing himself to be a fine man, one whom Edith might have flirted with, had their situation been different.
“My objection would not have been personal to the other party involved.”
His smile was slight as he bowed over her hand. “I see. Good to know. It’s time I was on my way. Let’s continue to consider the conundrum before us, shall we?”
Which conundrum was that? Edith helped him into his coat, and while he stood, top hat in hand, she kissed his cheek. A reward for bravery, a gesture of encouragement to a man much besieged with injustice.
“We’ll solve the riddle, Your Grace. The problem wants only time and determination.”
He tapped his hat onto his head and pulled on his gloves. “My thanks for those sentiments, and keep well until next we meet.”
Chapter Five
“No good duke goes unpunished.”
How to Ruin a Duke: A Novella Duet Page 19