The Duke's Dilemma Read online

  “No, Mama.”

  “I should think not! And if you care not a whit for me, at least give a thought to your poor father. With all the financial reverses the man has suffered this past year, he was forced to cash in his precious consols to give you your Season. ‘But never fear, my lord, your daughter will not fail you,’ I assured him. ‘With her pretty face and winning ways, she is bound to attract a rich parti who will keep you out of dun territory.”

  She pressed her hand to her ample bosom and sighed dramatically. “But Montford! Oh my Heavens! Never in my most blissful dreams did I hope to reach that high. Wait until I tell your father.

  “But first things first,” she declared, ignoring the fact that her daughter was still sobbing quietly into her soggy handkerchief. “Emily, alert John Coachman that we shall need the carriage in half an hour. I want to be away from here before that insufferable gaggle of fribbles who moon over Lucinda descends upon us.”

  Emily smiled to herself. Just yesterday that “insufferable gaggle of fribbles” had been delightful young men who, as potential suitors for Lucinda ‘s hand, were welcomed with open arms by the countess.

  “We must hurry to Madame Fanchon’s salon and engage her services before someone else thinks of it,” Lady Hargrave declared. “As it is, she will have to engage extra seamstresses to finish everything we need in time.”

  “But Mama, have you forgotten how unpleasant Madame Fanchon was the last time we visited her. I am certain she meant it when she said we could order no more on account.”

  “Nonsense. Watch that French needle pusher change her tune when she learns she is dressing the future Duchess of Montford—which reminds me! One thing you absolutely must have is a new riding habit. The duke is famous for his brilliant horsemanship. He will most certainly expect his duchess to ride to the hounds.”

  “But Mama,” Lucinda cried Gin, reaching for Emily ‘s hand beneath the table. “I am not at all good with horses. They frighten me horribly!”

  “You will simply have to get over it, my girl.”

  “But mama…!”

  “But me no more buts, young lady. You have been blessed with the opportunity to make the most brilliant marriage of this or any other Season. I expect you to make the most of it.”

  Lady Hargrave turned to Emily. “And I expect you to talk some sense into this foolish child. You know all too well what it is to be poor and without prospects. Tell her how humiliating it is to have to wear your cousin’s ill-fitting, cast-off dresses and hire out as a paid companion.” She shuddered. “Ask her what she thinks her life—indeed all our lives—will be like if her father is sent to debtors prison…and all because she failed to bring the duke up to scratch.”

  With a last admonishing glance at Emily, the countess swept from the room clutching Lady Cloris’s precious missive to her breast and demanding, at the top of her voice, someone find the Earl.

  She had scarcely closed the door behind her when Lucinda flung herself into Emily’s arms. “I cannot bear it,” she sobbed. “I’d rather die than marry the Duke of Montford. He is a horrible man!…and he must be a thousand years old.”

  “You are exaggerating as usual,” Emily said, giving her cousin’s heaving shoulders a comforting pat. “I was at Lady Halpern ‘s musicale too, you know. I remember the duke well. He was neither old nor horrible. A bit stiff-necked and proud, I admit, but quite amazingly handsome…in a chilly sort of way.”

  In truth, she knew exactly why Lucinda found Montford forbidding; she ‘d developed a few shivers of her own in the brief instant she’ d come under his frosty regard. She had even found herself thinking of him at odd moments ever since, and each time she thought of his dark, brooding countenance, those same shivers traveled her spine.

  She racked her brain for something to say that would comfort the frightened girl. “Think of all the lovely new gowns you will have to wear.”

  “What good will they be if I die of fright?” Lucinda wailed, dropping in a crumpled heap onto a nearby chair.

  “Isn’t it early days to be turning this into a Cheltenham tragedy? After all, there is only a one in five chance the duke will choose you.”

  Lucinda’ s eyes widened in astonishment. “How could he not choose me? I am this season’s Incomparable. Everyone who is anyone says I am the most beautiful girl to make her come-out in years.” She sniffed. “I cannot even imagine who the other four might be.”

  Emily grudgingly acknowledged that, while not precisely modest, her cousin’s statement was undoubtedly true. Even now, when such a fit of weeping would have left any other woman with puffy eyes and a mottled complexion, Lucinda’s perfect golden beauty remained undiminished.

  “Brynhaven is known to be one of the grandest country homes in all of England,” Emily said, deciding to try a practical approach to the problem. “I sincerely envy you the chance to see it. And since you really have no choice in the matter, why not make the best of it and enjoy your fortnight?” She paused. “And pray for a miracle.”

  Lucinda raised her head—her lovely eyes wide and frightened. “What do you mean, you envy me the chance to see Brynhaven? Never tell me you mean to let me face this terrible ordeal alone!”

  “The invitation was addressed to you and your parents,” Emily reminded her gently. “I do not recall any mention of other relatives.”

  “But surely it includes maids and valets and footmen and such. Everyone takes one’s own staff to such affairs.”

  Emily gritted her teeth. She had grown very fond of her pretty, flutter-brained cousin in the short time she had spent with her, but there were times when the girl’s tongue ran ahead of her wits. “Much as it may sometimes seem so, Lucinda,” she said crossly, “I am not a servant. Merely a ‘poor relation’ as my aunt so aptly put it. I am afraid you will have to do without my services in this instance.”

  “I shall do no such thing! If I must spend a fortnight at Brynhaven with the dreadful duke, I shall need you beside me every minute to tell me what to do. You know very well thinking gives me a headache.”

  Lucinda’s perfect, heart-shaped face assumed a mulish mien Emily had never before seen. “I’ll tell Mama and Papa I will not go to Brynhaven unless I can take you as my companion. Not even if they lock me in my chamber with nothing but bread and water for the rest of my life.”

  She tossed her silky, burnished curls defiantly. “So you might as well begin packing your portmanteau, dear Emily. “Mama will simply have to make the arrangements when she pens her response to Lady Cloris.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Darkness had fallen by the time the Earl of Hargrave’s party reached the entrance to Brynhaven, but they were obviously expected. Beyond the massive stone pillars and heavy iron gates, grooms bearing torches waited to escort them down the elm-lined driveway that stretched more than two miles to the main house of the estate.

  “I am certain we must be the last guests to arrive,” the countess complained petulantly. “I shall never forgive the earl for forcing us to travel in such a disreputable fashion. How lowering to have everyone clipping by us as if we were standing still. I can still see that superior smile on Lady Sudsley’s face when she passed me in her new barouche.”

  Emily made no comment, although it was her opinion they should consider themselves fortunate to have arrived at all—never mind late. The earl’ s ancient landau appeared to be held together by nothing more substantial than sticking plaster and prayer, and it was a sheer miracle the two spavined chestnuts hadn’t given up the ghost by the halfway point of the long, nightmarish journey.

  Furthermore, the landau had not been their only problem. Having long ago sold off all the other family conveyances, the earl was forced to hire a common vehicle-to-let to transport his valet, the prodigious collection of family luggage and the redoubtable Maggie Hawkes, Lady Hargrave’s maid, now serving both the Hargrave ladies since the untimely departure of Lady Lucinda ‘s loose-tongued abigail. Like most such rigs, the chaise had seen better days, and
twice the rackety little caravan had been forced to stop to repair a loose wheel.

  The earl, who rode on horseback beside the carriage, was the only member of the party traveling in style. The day before they had set out from London, he had visited Tattersall’s and, much to his countess’s disgust, traded the last of his consol earnings for a magnificent bay stallion. “A man is judged by the prime blood he sits astride,” he’d declared. “I’ll not be found wanting by such as the Duke of Montford.”

  The landau rounded a bend in the long drive and Emily finally got her first glimpse of Brynhaven Manor. Every window of the magnificent four-story structure was ablaze with light, and as they drew closer she could see that flanking the shallow, torch-lit stairs leading to the great carved doors stood two lines of footmen in the dark blue-and-gold livery of the duke’s household.

  A slender gentleman in sombre black descended the stairs to welcome them and Lady Hargrave, first to leave the carriage and obviously blinded by the brilliant torchlight, dropped into a deep court curtsy.

  “Good evening, Lady Hargrave. Welcome to Brynhaven.” The voice was deep and mellifluous, but the dark, bespectacled eyes perusing the top of the countess’s head were most definitely not those of the duke.

  “I am Edgar Rankin, the Duke of Montford’s man of affairs,” the voice continued. “His grace has not yet arrived, but we are expecting him sometime later this evening.” He turned his smiling gaze to Emily and her cousin. “Welcome, Lady Lucinda and Miss Haliburton,” he said. Suddenly, with a graceful, fluid movement which took Emily completely by surprise, he leapt forward to catch the countess, whose carriage-weary legs had failed her at the apex of her curtsy. Like a great, foundering whale, she toppled forward into Mr. Rankin ‘s outstretched arms.

  “What the devil!” Behind them the lady’s husband dismounted and handed his reins to a waiting groom. His heavily jowled face was mottled with rage and humiliation, and he grasped his wife’ s ample waist with both beefy hands to haul her to her feet. “Damn blast it, madam, you’ve made a fine cake of yourself this time,” he whispered harshly. “You are far too fat to be trying to do the pretty.”

  “Welcome to Brynhaven, my lord,” Mr. Rankin said, attempting to deflect attention from the staggering lady. His high color and slight breathlessness were the only visible indications he had just exerted the sort of effort not generally required of a gentlemen in his position. “If you and your ladies will follow me, the staff will show you to your accommodations.”

  “Lead on then, sir, by all means,” the earl blustered, with a quelling glance at his countess. Emily could immediately see the duke’s man of affairs was far kinder and more gentlemanly than his haughty employer. The smile he bestowed on the red-faced countess was benign in the extreme and the discreet hand he placed beneath her right elbow was just the thing to help the flustered lady regain her composure.

  “May I suggest a hot bath, my lady,” he said gently, “and a light repast in your chambers after your long, tiring journey. The duke’s other guests have all opted for an early night to prepare for tomorrow ‘s activities.” So saying, he led the small bedraggled group up the stairs toward the massive, wide-flung doors of the manor house.

  Emily caught a glimpse of Lucinda’ s distraught face and took a firm grip on the girl’s arm. “Don’t you dare faint,” she warned when she felt her cousin stumble. “I cannot carry you up these stairs and poor Mr. Rankin has already had his arms full of one Hargrave this evening.”

  Fairly dragging the limp-limbed girl past the interminable lines of stoic footmen, Emily followed the earl and countess into the great entry hall where an equally stoic butler and another row of footmen waited to greet them.

  With a feeling close to awe, Emily stared about her at the huge mullioned windows, the graceful curving staircase, the high, narrow balcony which ringed the cathedral-like room, and the magnificent Gobelin tapestries displaying the duke’s flamboyant coat of arms.

  Beside her, Lucinda sobbed softly. “Oh, Emily,” she whispered, “it is even grander and more forbidding than I had imagined. I want to go home.”

  For the first time in the two months she’d been Lucinda’s companion, Emily found herself in complete accord with her flighty young cousin.

  After a restless night that seemed never to end, Emily rose from her bed at dawn on her first morning at Brynhaven. She had been assigned the guest chamber next to Lucinda’s—a surprise, since she was not actually a guest, merely a paid employee (albeit one who had yet to receive her first shilling).

  She had been too exhausted to give the room more than a cursory glance before she sank gratefully into the steaming hip bath provided for her the night before. Now she could see that unlike the great drafty hall below, this room was of comfortable proportions and had obviously been decorated to suit a lady’s taste.

  A daintily executed mural on one stretched-silk wall depicted a group of ladies of the court surrounded by cherubic children and gamboling lambs, and everything from the delicate embroidered hanging over the bed to the exquisite Gillows rosewood writing table bespoke an understanding of a feminine sensibility. Emily’s sad little hand-me-down gowns filled one small corner of the intricately carved armoire, looking very much out of place in their elegant surroundings.

  Since the morning was chilly for May, she dressed in one of the plain kerseymere frocks Lucinda had discarded once she left the schoolroom. It was much too tight across Emily’s bosom—as were all the dresses she had inherited from her slender cousin—and a faded line showed where the hem had been let down. But it was warm and no one would expect a mere companion to be dressed in the first stare of fashion.

  A pair of sturdy half-boots completed the outfit, and since Lucinda never required her services before eleven o’clock, Emily made a spur-of-the-moment decision to spend her free time walking in the fresh, clean country air—an activity she had sorely missed during her sojourn in Landon.

  No sooner had she stepped into the corridor and closed her chamber door, than she encountered Maggie Hawkes. “For Miss Lucinda,” Hawkes said, indicating the cup of steaming chocolate she carried. “It’s that worried I am about the poor little scrap. What with sobbing her heart out and all, I doubt she closed an eye all night.”

  “Oh dear, I should go to her,” Emily said.

  “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, but it might be best if you didn’t. She’s all cried out now and I think she may drop off once she has a nip of chocolate and a bite or two of the biscuits I pried out of the duke’s cook.”

  “Perhaps you are right,” Emily agreed, feeling guilty at how relieved she was that Hawkes’ suggestion freed her to pursue her own desires for a few hours. “I’ll look in on her when I return from my walk.”

  “You do that, miss.” A frown darkened Hawkes’ age-weathered face. “I know it’s not for me to question my betters, ma’ am, but I can’t help but wish her nibs wasn’t so set on making a match of it with Miss Lucinda and this high and-mighty duke. Ta my way of thinking, she’s not right for him, nor him for her. The man is too particular by half, if cook is to be believed, and not one to tolerate anyone who don ‘t live up ta his demands—which we both know Miss Lucinda couldn’t do no matter how hard she tried.”

  “Haw do you mean…particular?”

  “Cook says the duke expects his house to be run like clockwork and there’s no excuses allowed. Whenever he’s here at Brynhaven, everybody from that stiff-rumped butler dawn to the boy who scrubs the pots in the scullery has to be on their toes every single minute. His fish has got to be so fresh it’s just quit swimmin’ when he’ s served it and he won’t touch an honest piece of mutton, but must have the youngest spring lamb—if you ever heard of such flummery—and it’s a special sauce for this and a special sauce for that.”

  She shook her head. “Why he’s even given orders that every morning cook must have fresh lye and lamb suet and olive oil for his nose-in-the-air valet to mix up his shaving soap—like even his graceship’s wh
iskers is better’ n those of ordinary folk. A recipe from the Duke of Marlborough’s valet, so cook says.”

  Hawkes searched Emily’s face with worried eyes. “Now tell me, miss, how long do you think a little flibbertigibbet like Miss Lucinda would last with such a particular one as that?”

  Emily shuddered. “It would be a miracle if the duke didn’t strangle her within a sen’night of the wedding.”

  “My way of thinking exactly, and it just don’t seem fair. It’s the earl what’s punting on the River Tick due to spending his nights in the gambling hells and who knows where else. But it’s the little miss what has to pay for the old humgudgeon ‘s sins.”

  “It isn’t fair, Hawkes, but there’s little in life that is,” Emily deplored, thinking of how she was paying for the extravagances of her own father—and Farley Haliburton’s only vice had been an obsession with research into ancient myths and legends which had driven him to spend every guinea he had on obscure tomes that no one but another scholar of his peculiar ilk would find of any value.

  Emily had loved her father dearly and took great pride both in the modest fame his erudite publications had earned in academic circles and in the research and editing she had contributed to them. But she couldn’t help but wish he had invested some portion of the meager family funds in something more practical than a collection of dusty volumes.

  She looked up to find two chamber maids approaching, their arms full of linens, and she held her finger to her lips to warn Hawkes to silence.

  Hawkes nodded sagely. “I’ll be taking this chocolate to Miss Lucinda now,” she declared in a voice loud enough to a rise any but the hardest of hearing of her intentions.