The Duke Who Loved Me by Jane Ashford

Fourteen

The gentleman who strolled into the Deeping drawing room the next morning was that paragon of fashion and elegance, the Duke of Tereford in full glory. Ned had done quite well with the boots, using tips about Hobbs’s practices from the woman who provided James’s rooms. He’d also proved adept with a flatiron, as promised. The intricate neckcloth was all James’s achievement, of course. But Ned had done well with his hair. He’d also been greatly impressed by the result of their efforts.

James found Cecelia’s four new friends waiting as he had requested. He also found no one else, which was a relief. He’d been scheming over how to be rid of a crowd of duennas and had not developed a satisfactory plan. When greetings had been exchanged, he said, “I have come to discuss Miss Vainsmede’s situation. It is not quite proper for me to…”

“We don’t care about that,” interrupted Charlotte Deeping. “We want to help.”

“Cecelia is being exceedingly brave,” said Miss Ada Grandison.

“Perhaps because she has nothing to be ashamed of?” replied Harriet Finch dryly.

James decided that he liked the redheaded girl more than he’d thought. “Henry told me you wished to help,” he said.

“We do,” said Miss Finch. “But there are difficulties.”

James raised his eyebrows.

“We’ve all been ordered to avoid being seen with her too often,” said Sarah Moran with a woeful expression. “Our mothers say that if there is even a hint that she is an unsuitable companion…”

“Ridiculous!” exclaimed Charlotte Deeping.

“We intend to defy them,” added Miss Grandison.

“We wish to do so,” said Miss Finch. “We would be happy to do so. But if we all disobey our parents to sneak out and visit Cecelia… That may not do her any good.”

“She could be accused of inspiring impropriety and rebellion,” said Sarah Moran gloomily.

“Which we are not permitted to exhibit,” muttered Ada Grandison.

James had not foreseen this obstacle. Matters had gone further and faster than he’d expected. Fury at Prince Karl burned through him.

“Also, we are not allowed to defend her in conversation,” said Charlotte Deeping, who looked bitterly angry. “Because we are not supposed to know about ‘such things.’ I tried to tell Lady Harte that the story wasn’t true, and she had a nervous spasm.”

“She is a foolish widgeon,” said Harriet Finch.

“Who relishes her spasms,” added Ada Grandison.

“I know,” replied Miss Deeping. “But that does not alter the situation.”

James realized that he hadn’t quite understood the limitations young ladies labored under. Clearly they had thought this through, and he had not. “I see,” he said. It seemed he must abandon this line of assistance. But he wanted a plan to offer before he called on Cecelia.

“Lady Wilton wants to help,” said Miss Moran. “And she can do as she pleases.”

And thus it was that James found himself, half an hour later, at the door of his grandmother’s house, an address he’d been told he visited far too seldom.

He knocked, was admitted at once, and followed a footman up to the drawing room. He wondered if this was the same servant who’d been sent to Tereford House to find him. He might have asked if not for a slender hope of preserving his refuge for the future.

The old lady already had morning callers, and James’s arrival caused a stunned silence, and then a murmuring sensation. Two elderly women and a matron with a debutante daughter in tow gazed at him as if he’d appeared in a magical puff of smoke.

“Tereford,” said Lady Wilton.

“Hello, Grandmamma.”

“How pleasant to see you. You know everyone, of course.” She nevertheless named her guests. The sardonic glint in her eye told James that she knew he’d forgotten half of them. He made his bow and took the chair he was offered.

“You are fully recuperated?” asked the matron.

James frowned at her, at a loss. Had his grandmother spread some tale of an illness?

“From the…contretemps with Prince Karl,” the woman added, mockery in her gaze.

For a moment James couldn’t think what she meant. His concern for Cecelia had pushed that regrettable episode out of his mind. The sword bout, which had felt like such a deep humiliation, hardly seemed to matter anymore. Though he could wish that he’d punched the fellow much harder. But apparently the incident was still fresh to others. He’d fed the fires of gossip with his flight, and now these ladies were waiting for his response like carrion birds hanging over a carcass. They would spread their gleaned tidbits throughout the ton. Best to dispose of this matter at once. “Contre…?” he mused. “Ah, I had forgotten.” He tried to sound as if she’d mentioned some silly, rather stupid matter. From the look on her face, he’d succeeded.

“The prince has made quite an impression in society,” said one of the old ladies.

She was referring to Cecelia now, James had no doubt. It was a pity that one couldn’t simply tell people they were idiots. It would save a great deal of time. Except that they wouldn’t listen. And they would take it as a twisted sort of corroboration. “Has he?” James replied in a bored tone. “People seem to enjoy every sort of ridiculous spectacle.”

The old lady bridled. “Some appear to be enjoying more than others,” said her companion sourly.

He could not shake a septuagenarian with the bones of a bird, or simply order her out of the house. Declaring that he had private business to discuss with his grandmother would merely draw attention. James settled for a blank, world-weary look, as if he couldn’t imagine why she was speaking to him about something so tedious.

“Do you call the prince ridiculous?” asked the matron.

The callers bent closer. Again James imagined beaks poised to snatch up gobbets of well-aged scandal. “Of course not,” he said.

They waited. He added nothing.

“Have you heard whether Lady Goring is recovering from her illness?” asked Lady Wilton.

It was her drawing room. Visitors could not demand a return to the previous subject. They responded. James remained silent, offering them no more nuggets to share. Finally, after what seemed an eternity of maddening chatter, the callers departed.

Lady Wilton waited until they were well away before saying, “You did well on the matter of your unfortunate sword fight.”

James brushed this aside. “I don’t care about that.”

His grandmother examined him. “Do you not?”

“No. I’ve come to talk about Miss Vainsmede and Prince Karl, though their names should not be linked.”

She nodded. “Go and tell the footman that I am not receiving any longer.”

James did so. When he returned, his grandmother eyed him. “Where have you been?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Perhaps not, now that you are back again. But I am curious. And since I suspect that you want my help, you must indulge me.”

Refusing to grind his teeth, James said, “At the town house, clearing up.”

“I sent a servant to look for you there,” she said.

“Well, the next time you want a thing found, you should send someone else.”

“Hah.” She sat back and gazed at him. “It seems you have heard about the rumors Prince Karl is spreading.”

“The man is scum,” James said from between clenched teeth.

“One would expect a royal personage to be more of a gentleman. But then look at our own English princes.”

James snorted. “He must be stopped.”

“How do you intend to do that? Not more swordplay. I hope?”

“It’s well known that you are a mistress of sarcasm, Grandmamma. You needn’t demonstrate your skills on me.”

“I am rather annoyed with you, James.”

He ignored this. She was so often annoyed. “I have formed a plan.” It had come to him as he endured the callers. “I shall escort you and Ce…Miss Vainsmede to a play first of all.”

“To sit before everyone and show that we don’t care a snap of our fingers for the whispers?”

“Precisely.” Lady Wilton was irascible, but no one had ever called her slow.

“She has agreed to attend?”

“I haven’t told her yet. I came to you first. But she will.”

“Can you be so certain…”

“You may leave that to me!”

She gazed at him as if she was trying to see right through to his depths. “You understand that such a small party—just the three of us—will look marked. As I am your grandmother.”

James decided that was an advantage rather than a drawback. He nodded.

Lady Wilton did the same, as if he’d confirmed some suspicion. “Very well,” she said. “I will make a pact with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I will join in your scheme if you do something about Ferrington.”

“Ferrington?”

“Why can no one remember that he exists?” asked his grandmother irritably. “My great-grandson who is now the Earl of Ferrington.”

“The one who has disappeared,” said James.

“So you do recall that much. Yes! I seem to be plagued with disappearing descendants.”

“I will set inquiries in motion,” said James.

“This is a meaningless phrase.”

“I will hire agents to search for him.”

“What sort of…”

“I don’t know, Grandmamma! I have never done such a thing before. I will have to discover where one finds such people. But you have my word that I will do so.”

She gazed at him. “I don’t believe you’ve ever given me your word before.”

James didn’t remember. She was probably right.

“But I think that it is good,” his grandmother added.

“Thank you.” The words were sarcastic, but he found that he was also gratified by her trust.

“Very well then. I shall do all I can to help you.”

James rose. “I will send word of the details for the play.”

In the street, James paused to gather his thoughts. He ached to see Cecelia but wanted to get it right, as he had not been doing so far. Should he speak of marriage first? He longed to hear her say that she would marry him, that she wanted to as much as he wished it. He wanted to protect her from all harm. He indulged in a brief fantasy of sweeping her away from London to some perfect realm where they could…

“Tereford!”

James turned to find one of the leading lights of the dandy set approaching, resplendent in a heavily padded tailcoat, a neckcloth that appeared to be choking him, and a glittering wealth of fobs. “Hello, Crawdon.”

“Where the devil have you been, man? You know Bingham snabbled your valet.”

“I heard.”

“Want me to cut him? Serve him right, the sneak. I never liked the fellow.”

“That isn’t necessary,” said James.

This earned him a critical look. “If you say so,” replied the dandy. “But I must tell you the shine on your boots is not up to your usual standard.”

James marveled at how much less he cared about this than in the past. Which was not to say he cared nothing. He would find someone to give the Hessians a proper gleam.

“Care to toddle along to the club with me?” Crawdon asked.

“Sorry, I have an engagement.”

“Very well. Oh! That prince of yours has been kicking up a fuss.”

“Hardly mine,” said James in his most thoroughly bored tone.

“You did have that set-to.”

“A momentary lapse.” James made a dismissive gesture.

“Right. Foreigners, eh?” Crawdon touched his hat brim and walked off.

James turned in the opposite direction and set off for Cecelia’s home. He couldn’t remember when he’d made so many morning calls. In the past he’d found them tedious beyond belief. How strangely things changed.

Cecelia was surprised when the footman announced James. At any other time her heart might have leapt at the news of his arrival. But today he was the last in a string of visitors who had tried her patience to the breaking point. All of them had been sly gossips probing for tidbits about Prince Karl, looking for cracks in her facade. And there seemed nothing she could say to dispel the miasma of innuendo. Whatever she did, the ground shifted beneath her feet. If she denied, she was protesting too much. If she pretended nothing unusual had occurred, she was evasive and deceptive. Blank incomprehension only roused more probing. And feigning stupidity was both foreign and repugnant to her. Aunt Valeria had actually tried to help. But she was abrupt and clumsy. And the sudden abandonment of her pretended deafness bewildered several visitors. She had finally fled to her beehives.

This had made for an extremely trying morning, and yet Cecelia hadn’t thought it wise to refuse callers. To shut herself away would look like cowardice, or guilt. And so she’d put on her brightest gown, had her hair dressed in careless ringlets, and spent the morning stifling her anger. Now it hovered like storm clouds about to break.

So when James strolled in, wearing an impeccable dark-blue coat and pale pantaloons, with a fresh haircut, looking every inch the nonpareil, Cecelia’s heart did not melt. Rather she resented his careless nonchalance. “You’re back,” she said.

“I am.” He sat down beside her on the sofa as if he’d naturally been invited to do so.

No one would have associated this man of fashion with the dusty, disheveled fellow throwing broken-down furniture out a window. He looked like the old James, and Cecelia felt a tremor of unease. The old James had not noticed the plight of poor children or been full of gratitude for scones or dressed up in old-fashioned robes and paraded about. He had certainly never kissed her. He had looked down his nose and called her the bane of his existence. Had that James returned? If he had, she frankly could not bear it just now. And why had he chosen this inopportune day to emerge? When he was all too likely to hear things. “I am rather tired,” she said. “What do you want?”

He looked startled, as well he might, she supposed. “I beg your pardon,” she added. “I have a wretched headache.”

He seemed about to speak, hesitated, then gave a slight shake of his head. “I’ve come to invite you to attend a play tomorrow evening with me and Lady Wilton,” he said.

Words slipped out before Cecelia thought. “Going to Vauxhall with Lady Wilton created this whole tangle in the first place.”

“What?”

She hadn’t meant to say that. She didn’t want him to know…anything. Particularly not about Prince Karl’s kiss. He mustn’t ever… And then something in James’s expression showed Cecelia that he’d already heard the gossip and was here because of it. She flushed as a host of implications raced through her mind. “You need not do this,” she said.

“Ask you to a play?”

She was sick of sly implications and fencing with words. “When you never have before? We both know why you’re doing it, James.”

“I’m doing it because you need help,” he answered.

He might have said something that heartened or soothed her. Cecelia imagined that was possible. This was not it, however. Had she become a charity case now for the Corinthian, the newly minted duke, the handsomest man in England? “I will manage for myself.”

“How do you propose to do that?”

She heard the old James in these words—the impatient, dismissive James of so many of their disputes. “That is my problem, not yours.”

“Brazen it out until the talk passes, I suppose.”

“Brazen…” A lady did not curse. Another unfairness imposed by the so-called polite world. She gritted her teeth instead.

“While an active…opponent adds fuel to the fires of gossip.” His expression had gone hard with this reference to the prince. “That’s no good.”

Cecelia silently consigned Prince Karl and the gossips and just everybody to perdition.

“Don’t you want to fight? You never had any difficulty opposing me.”

His smile goaded her. But then she thought she glimpsed something else in his eyes. They seemed sympathetic rather than satirical, warm instead of combative. Cecelia’s throat grew tight. Over the morning, she’d been feeling very much alone.

“You always argued matters of principle. Are they not involved here?”

The soft look was gone. No doubt she’d imagined it. “That was about estate business and your trust. This is rather different.”

“Is it?”

“Yes!” Cecelia sat straighter, closed her hands into fists. “How does one combat whispers and sneaking lies, James? I have spent the morning trying. It’s like trying to strike fog.”

“Difficult,” he agreed. “However, you don’t need to battle it alone. Perhaps your father would come to the play as well?”

“He never goes to the theater.”

“So would his presence signal solidarity or panic?”

The mere question goaded her further. “I don’t wish to tell him about this matter,” said Cecelia. Papa would be distressed, yet still reluctant to bestir himself, guilty about his reaction, resistant to any shift in his routine, and then annoyed. She didn’t care to deal with any step of that process.

“You don’t think he would want to help you?”

“What have you ever observed in him that makes you think so?” She heard the brush of bitterness in her voice and clamped her lips down upon it.

“And so you took up his tasks for my benefit,” James replied softly. “You must allow me to reciprocate. I insist that you come to the play.”

“Insist? What makes you think you have the right to do that?”

“That is the Cecelia I know,” he answered with a smile that shook her to the core. “I don’t have the right. But I have a sincere desire to enter the lists at your side.”

The soft look was back. She hadn’t imagined it. Perhaps the man who had kissed her so tenderly had not vanished into the old James.

“Unless you will give me that right?” he added.

He moved. It almost looked as if he meant to kneel at her feet.

“Ah, they told me you were here, Tereford.” Aunt Valeria strode into the room and plopped down in a chair directly across from Cecelia. She gazed at them, her round face disgruntled. “I told the servants to inform me if any gentlemen called.”

Now, now she was going to play the chaperone? She’d left Cecelia to the spite of the gossips, but she chose to interrupt James. This was to be a day when nothing went right, Cecelia concluded.

James sat back. “I came to invite Ce…Miss Vainsmede to a play tomorrow.”

“I don’t care for the stage,” said Aunt Valeria. “All that silly prancing and ranting while one stifles in a reek of perfumes and pomades. The stench of a crowd! I don’t believe I can…”

“Lady Wilton will accompany us,” James interrupted.

“Ah.” Aunt Valeria’s complaint was arrested. “Well, I suppose that’s all right then.” She brightened. “She can’t complain about my chaperonage if she’s taken charge. I will allow it.”

“Al…” began Cecelia.

“Very good of you,” said James.

His tone and the understanding look he gave Cecelia cut off her explosion. She throttled her temper and refrained from telling her aunt that she had no right to allow—or forbid—anything. She was going to have to deal with this new, infuriating Aunt Valeria. Who sat staring at them, showing no sign of turning to her notebook and her customary oblivious state, nor any vestige of enjoyment. Clearly, she was willing James to go.

He rose. “Until tomorrow,” he said. He held Cecelia’s gaze for a heart-stopping moment, and then he was gone.