How to Catch a Duke in Ten Days by Violet Hamers
Chapter Seven
“What is wrong?” Hermione asked, trying to avoid the angry gaze of her father.
“What is wrong? What is wrong!?” he repeated in outrage.
“Shh!” Cordelia begged, waving an errant hand at Rufus. “There may be staff in the corridors.” Rufus in response walked straight to Hermione and chose to speak inches away from her face with so much anger that she could see the red veins in the whites of his eyes were much bolder than before.
“The Duke was actually trying to engage you in conversation, and you sat there choosing to say nothing at all. Are you blind? Are you incapable of seeing how this is hardly going to persuade a Duke to propose to you?” He would not stop now; he was in full flow, ready to insult her without provocation. “I do believe we are setting our hopes on someone incredibly ill fitted for this task. Sometimes I wonder, if Phoebe were born first, would I have half as many problems as you have caused–”
“Father,” she begged of him, cutting him off mid flow, “I was just startled. The Duke was not… he was not what I expected him to be.” She rushed to explain in the only way that she could without revealing that she had seen him before. “I was not prepared for conversation this morning.”
“My Lord,” Cordelia interrupted the two of them and came to stand beside her father, placing a hand comfortingly on his arm. “We must allow for inexperience. Hermione is young and is not yet adept at such things as charming a man.”
“She managed it perfectly well before,” Rufus said sharply, still waving madly in her direction. “Well, she almost did.” In response to the snide words, Hermione lifted a hand to the locket around her throat, fiddling with the clasp that held it shut.
She was uncertain why she continued to wear it. She could have taken it off at any time, even thrown it away. She knew deep down that she should. She owed the gentleman who had given her the gift nothing, but yet, she held onto it. Not out of hope, for she knew he was never coming back. She supposed she kept it out of sadness, knowing what life could have been hers, and yet, it slipped through the gaps before she could grab hold of it and keep it close.
“Hermione, this is really very simple,” Rufus turned away from Cordelia and set his glower on her. “How do you expect to charm a man if you will not talk to him?”
Hermione was tempted to snap the words that she may have well already charmed him as the memory of her kiss with the Duke came back to her mind, but she knew she could not mention it. That memory was a private one that would always be hers and the Duke’s; she would never share it with anyone else.
“You make it sound easy,” Hermione said, lifting her gaze to meet her father’s. “May I remind you that I do not know this man? He is a stranger to me. Charming him is not like lighting a candle; it does not work that quickly or that simply.”
“But it can be, Hermione. It really can be,” Cordelia said softly. She took Hermione’s shoulder and steered her away from her father, urging her to take a small chair by the window. As she sat down, Cordelia knelt in front of her. “Let me help you in this.”
“Help? How?” Hermione asked. She didn’t want help. She wanted to run from this house as fast as she could and protect the man that she had kissed the night before from her own manipulative ends.
If only I could run now.
“Let me put together some guidelines for you,” Cordelia said with a sudden smile as though overwhelming pleased with her own idea. “If we make a plan, then I am certain we can achieve our aim with relative ease. I mean, look at you,” she said, placing a hand to Hermione’s chin and lifting it an inch. “What man could not fall in love with you?”
Hermione pulled her chin out of her aunt’s grasp. She knew she should have been warmed by the compliment, but she was not. She was just picturing the memory of standing at the church door with the bouquet of flowers that had stood proudly in her hand falling to the floor. Phoebe at her side had rushed to pick up the flowers, but it did little good. The petals were scattered across the ground, and she hadn’t needed them anymore.
“I can think of one man,” Hermione said with honesty in return. Cordelia’s smile vanished.
“You cannot sit here feeling sorry for yourself,” Rufus said sharply from across the room.
Hermione hadn’t even noticed she was on the verge of tears until Cordelia passed a handkerchief into her hands. That’s when she felt the sting of the tears pricking her eyes and the first solitary tear that crossed her cheek.
“We must do something about this. Now,” Rufus said, turning to a writing desk nearby. He collected parchment, ink and a quill then beckoned for Cordelia to come to the desk.
“Right, let us think about this,” she said as she took the seat with Rufus standing over her. “Number one, Hermione, a gentleman always prefers a woman to agree with him. Whether that’s opinions on the world or on personal matters. In short, do not challenge a man.” Cordelia turned to write down the words on the parchment.
“What if I do not agree with him?” Hermione asked in outrage.
“Then keep it to yourself,” Rufus warned. She pressed the handkerchief to her cheeks, drying another tear that escaped.
“Guideline number two,” Cordelia went on, pausing with the quill high in the air, “a lady should always be demure and pleasantly spoken. Speak when spoken too, that is imperative, but not boldly.”
“I believe I could be the antithesis of the very woman you are describing,” Hermione said, turning her eyes out of the window.
“All the more reason for you to try harder,” Rufus said quietly. Hermione chose to ignore her father.
Up until a week and a half ago, Rufus had never been so rude and callous to her. On the contrary, he had been warm and excited about her future. That had all changed within the space of one day. He saw the affront against her as an error she had made that put the whole family’s reputation and chance of wealth again in jeopardy.
These days, she was not certain she liked her father very much at all. “Number three, a lady should always smile sweetly. A smile is her greatest asset,” Cordelia said wistfully.
“Gentlemen in London believed a woman’s dowry was her greatest asset,” Hermione said tartly.
“Well, you do not have that, so you make the best of what you can,” Rufus warned.
“Look at Phoebe; never have I seen a woman’s smile as delightful and as sweet as Phoebe’s. It is little wonder she was quite the favorite of suitors at her debut earlier this year,” Cordelia remarked as she added more notes to the parchment in front of her.
Hearing Phoebe’s name made Hermione work harder to dry her tears. Phoebe had been a firm favorite of many gentlemen, but her options were now scuppered because of what happened to Hermione.
“Guideline number four, make a man feel special,” Cordelia said with delight. “Any gentleman should believe that you are interested in only them and no one else. Pander to the Duke’s likings, flatter him, and flatter his station too.”
“This is good,” Rufus said from behind her. “What else?”
“Here is where we become more artful,” Cordelia said, revealing a smile on her features that Hermione had never seen before. It was one with a deviousness to it. “Guideline number five, put yourself at a gentleman’s mercy. They like the ability to help a young woman.”
“This is getting worse by the minute,” Hermione whispered.
“What did you say?” Rufus looked over at her.
“Nothing,” she lied, turning back to them. “Pray, tell me how else I am to pull the wool over this poor gentleman’s eyes,” she said with thick sarcasm, earning a firmer glower from her father.
“Number six, catch the gentleman in a compromising position.”
“What?” Hermione said, nearly falling off her chair at her outrage.
“Think of it,” Cordelia said, hurrying to write down her notes. “Once a gentleman is seen in a compromising situation with a lady, to protect both his reputation and hers, he must propose. That may well be your best chance in the month to persuade the Duke to make a proposal.” She drew a line under her notes with a flourish before she passed the parchment to Rufus.
He blew on the ink, trying to dry it a little before he smiled at the notes made, then he crossed the room and placed the parchment in Hermione’s lap. She didn’t pick it up at first. She kept her hands as far away from it as possible.
“I hope you are paying attention, Hermione,” Rufus said, gesturing to her to pick up the notes. “This is the best chance you have of not being a spinster for the rest of your life.” She picked up the parchment and read over the notes again. Her eyes tarried for a long time along guideline number six with some horror.
“What do you think, Hermione?” Cordelia asked. Hermione lifted her eyes, ready to tell them exactly what she truly thought when she saw the anger in her father’s gaze.
“Thank you for your help,” she said and placed the handkerchief on a nearside table. She folded the parchment into tiny squares, as small as it would go, before she stood from her seat. “If you would excuse me, I need some air.”
She walked to the doorway with the two of them following her. “If you see the Duke on your walk, be sure to speak to him,” Rufus warned. “He must think you practically a mute after your display this morning.”
She highly doubted that was the case after she had been so outspoken to him the night before. She nodded once at her father regardless and headed out of the door. She moved along the corridor and down the stairs with some speed, desperate to escape the house.
When she reached the front door, she flung it wide open and stumbled down the steps, hurrying to be out of the house.
As she walked around the house, past the clifftops and heading to the gardens, she lifted her fingers to her lips, passing them over where the Duke had taken his liberty the night before. When she closed her eyes, she could imagine being back there again in the library with the Duke, only this time, in her imagination she didn’t stop him. She let the kiss continue.
Her eyes shot open again and breathlessly she circled the house entirely and headed for the formal gardens at its rear.
The gardens were laid out with formal lines of borders and even high yew bushes that tried to block out some of the wind that came off the sea. Between these bushes, Hermione could catch a glimpse of two people walking together, followed by a third person dressed as a maid. It was Phoebe and Officer Stenham, walking side by side.
Hermione hid behind the nearest rhododendron bush; she loathed to interrupt them. Phoebe had a sweet smile on her face, of a kind that she had never even worn with the gentlemen that had pursued her in London. Officer Stenham was talking at length about something, with Phoebe attentively listening to him.
As they walked past Hermione, she waited until they had disappeared with their chaperone before she stepped out and headed in the direction they had come from. On this side of the garden, a whole forest stretched out before her, far away from the formal gardens or the cliff edge. Hermione wandered into it, longing to be lost amongst the tree trunks for a short while.
Once she was certain that the house was far behind her, she stopped in a clearing and breathed deeply. There was a sound to her left of someone moving about that made her open her eyes.
“You might want to step back again,” the Duke’s voice appeared out of nowhere. Hermione whipped her head around to see him standing not too far from her with a long bow and arrow in his hands, pulled and ready to fire.
