What I Did For a Duke (14 page)

Chapter 13

T
he following morning dawned a bit cloudy, but the kitchen was warm and bustling as usual, and Moncrieffe was surprised to discover he was in fact rather pleased to be there. He took the seat he took yesterday, and noticed that everyone else had done the same thing.

“Good morning, Lady Millicent. What will you be sketching today?”

He’d decided to be a devil.

“Kittens!” she said happily. “I found a nest of them in the barn. I should also like to sketch some ducks. Perhaps we can all walk out again.”

Harry looked less happy about that, the duke noticed. He was decidedly subdued this morning.

“Never gamble with the duke, son,” Jacob said from his end of the table, bluntly reading his glum face. “He never loses.”

The duke gave a shrug; Harry produced a wan smile, Ian had laid down his silverware because his appetite deserted him in the presence of the duke.

The duke was hungry. He took a bite of egg and stabbed at his ham with a fork, while the housekeeper and a trio of maids bustled about clucking and spying and filling his cup with steaming black coffee fresh off the fire.

He watched Genevieve Eversea incise her egg again. The idiosyncrasy fascinated him unduly. It was as precise and singular as she was.

It was interesting to discover she haunted the house at night, too. He had lulled himself to sleep with that image: her dashing up the stairs, her long black hair sailing out behind her, her nightdress billowing.

Running away from him.

Running away from
herself
. Miss Eversea did that very well.

He anticipated a time when that would no longer be true.

“Waterfowl are handsome subjects,” the duke agreed gravely with Millicent.

“I like to shoot them when they’re grown,” Jacob Eversea said.

“Papa!” Olivia and Genevieve reproached in unison.

But Millicent wasn’t offended. She was diverted by the marmalade when it was passed beneath her nose on its way to Harry, who sat next to her, and she intercepted it with a charming wrinkle of her nose.

“What?” Jacob Eversea said mildly. “They’re not downy and adorable when they’re older, but they
are
delicious,” he said amiably and tore off half of his bread in his teeth. “Harriet knows how to do marvelous things with waterfowl and the like and your mother makes a mint jelly . . .”

Isolde Eversea glanced up at her husband with an expression of almost . . . it was almost entreaty.

But then Jacob stopped talking and he never quite met his wife’s eyes.

Moncrieffe wondered again what it was about. Some secret marital discord. Perhaps not terminal. The duke remembered a bit of marital discord with his wife along with . . . along with everything else.

“What shall we shoot today, lads?” Jacob continued as if shooting was a given. “Grouse? Pheasant? Duck?” He said wickedly, “The ladies can get their portraits first, and then we’ll shoot them.” He winked.

“I wouldn’t mind shooting a thing or two,” the duke offered.

Ian paused mid-chew. He gulped noisily, and then, “I believe we’re expecting rain,” he said firmly.

The remaining clouds slid away then, and a brilliant celestial ray came crashing through the window.

“My musket is always clean,” the duke almost purred.

“And you always were a crack shot,” Jacob commented idly.

“Still am,” the duke agreed cheerily.

He caught Genevieve’s eyes, glinting wickedly at him from across the table. She ducked her head again.

At some point they all noticed Harriet the cook standing silently in the kitchen doorway.

She’d gone pale, and she’d knotted her hands in her apron.

“What is it, Harriet?” Jacob Eversea asked sharply.

“Summat . . . well, summat has arrived, sir.” Her hands twisted in her apron.

“Judging from your expression, it’s a ransom note of some sort,” Mr. Eversea said dryly.

“No, sir. It’s . . . they . . .” She abandoned her effort to explain. “Well, I think you ought to see them,” she said darkly.

She vanished from the dining room and returned to the kitchen. The Everseas and their guests heard a good deal of muttered discussion, then some shuffling and jostling ensued.

And then two footmen staggered forth.

They were bearing between them a flower arrangement so brilliant it was nearly
sentient
. A profusion of roses, the heads of which were nearly as pulsatingly crimson and large as actual hearts sprung from a luxurious froth of ferny greenery and minuscule lacy white flowers. It was magnificently intimidating and almost indecently sensual.

The whole thing was the height of a three-year-old child.

Everyone stared at it uneasily, as though it might pull a chair up to the table and help itself to kippers.

Even Olivia was nonplussed.

And then she looked resigned. “I wonder who on earth . . . It’s the same after every ball, isn’t it? Perhaps we can find a place for them in—”

“They’re for Miss
Genevieve
.” Harriet seemed as troubled by this as by their very presence in the house.

Genevieve would never forget the stunned silence that followed. Or the sight of every head at the table swiveling toward her. She gained an immediate and very funny impression of being surrounded by
O
s: mouths dropped open, eyes gone wide.

All the eyes beamed such potent curiosity at her she thought little singed holes might appear in her gown.

“Only an outrageously wealthy man would be able to afford flowers such as those,” her mother finally said archly.

And at that, the room was resoundingly silent. Everyone seemed to be vibrating with the effort not to look at the duke.

“Oh, Mama.” Genevieve was careful to say this with an eye-roll. Her voice only shook a little. Her heart was flinging herself at the walls of her chest. “That, or a man who just happens to possess or has access to a thriving greenhouse, and that describes most of our acquaintances. I haven’t the faintest idea who sent them. Will you kindly bring them to me?”

The footmen shuffled over and settled them down near her with a grunt.

And she reached out with trembling fingers and touched one of the roses. It was, unsurprisingly . . . unconscionably soft.

“A message was sent along with it, Miss Genevieve.” Harriet handed over the sheet of folded foolscap, closed with a blob of wax. No seal was pressed into it.

Genevieve slid her finger beneath it to break the seal.

My esteemed Venus—

These reminded me of you. In my dreams, your lips are just this soft.

—Your devoted servant,

Mars

Her breath was officially lost.

Her eyes blurred. Instantly she burned, burned with the scandalous pleasure and shock and . . .
hilarity
of it.

As usual, the duke had done far too much and precisely the right thing.

She looked up a moment later. She, too, refused to meet his eyes.

He’d accused her of being a poor actress. She would need to prove otherwise, despite the fact that she was certain her complexion was forty shades pinker than it had been when she arrived at breakfast this morning. Because these flowers were both for her benefit and for the benefit of . . . Harry’s education. She shouldn’t like to waste the duke’s efforts.

“They’re perfect,” she said almost offhandedly. As though she received such things every day.

“We can find a place for them in . . .” Mrs. Eversea stared, her teeth in her bottom lip. She was clearly having difficulty imagining the roses in any of her lower rooms.

The
duke
had no compunctions about staring at Genevieve.

A throat was cleared. She looked across to see Millicent, wide-eyed and wondering, face aglow with wicked but not at all resentful speculation, and Harry, whose face was, once again, unreadable.

Though it was considerably tense about the jaw.

It was Harry who had cleared his throat.

“I say, Genevieve,” Harry’s voice was cheery, but pitched about an octave higher than usual. “Do you know who sent them?”

“Mars,” Genevieve replied laconically. “Or so the message is signed.”

This caused another silence, while gazes ricocheted about the table frantically.

“Who is Mars?” Ian demanded suddenly. He shot a quick dark look at the duke.

“The god of war, as I understand it. It’s also a planet. A red one, I’m given to understand.” Genevieve was enjoying herself.

Not the least because of the expressions on the faces of her family. Her parents wore identically watchful expressions, bemused, eyebrows poised in mid-mast position, prepared to dive or hike as the situation evolved. Their offspring provided endless opportunities for them to test their flexibility and ingenuity. But never had Genevieve tested it.

“Who
is
the mysterious Mars? I think I might swoon!” Millicent placed the back of her hand against her forehead.

“I’ll catch you, Millicent,” Harry said flatly. The promise rather lacked conviction.

Everyone was clearly waiting for Genevieve to say something.

“Why don’t you take them up to my bedchamber, if you would?” she suggested softly to the footmen.

And as though those roses were instead a coronet and she’d been crowned Queen of the Morning, whose commands were not to be countermanded, no one suggested otherwise.

With grunts and knee cracks, the footmen hoisted them again, and stoically prepared to shuffle the long journey up the stairs to her bedchamber.

They needed to pause for a rest and a cool drink on the second landing.

“Do
you
know who sent them?” Harry whispered to Millicent.

“No. But she asked me just the other day if I’d ever kissed a man!” Millicent murmured to Harry.

T
he arrival of the roses effectively put an end to breakfast, as it was far too disturbing and exciting an occurrence. Silverware was abandoned, napkins folded, and Harriet ceased pouring the coffee. She wanted to shoo the family from the kitchen, obviously, so she and the rest of the kitchen servants could have a good gossip about the roses.

The duke, sensing this, and sensing no one would depart until
he
pushed his chair back, folded his napkin and did just that.

“I’d love to take you up on your offer of a shoot,” he said to Jacob. “Birds or . . . targets.”

He glanced over at Ian. Allowed his gaze to linger.

Ian glared helplessly—and darkly—back at him, before trying to find a more comfortable place for his own gaze. It turned out to be his lap.

“Splendid, Moncrieffe.” Jacob pushed back his chair. “We’ll all go!” It was clear this part was an order to all the young men present, and he directed this to Ian, in particular. “Apart from the ladies, of course. I’ll have the muskets fetched and horses saddled. Let’s convene in the drive in an hour.”

T
he first thing Genevieve wanted to do was rush upstairs to visit her roses, but Ian intercepted her on the landing.

“Genny . . .”

Her brothers were the only people who got away with calling her Genny.

She looked up at him.

“Good heavens, Ian. It looks as though you haven’t been sleeping.”

She said this innocently, but the intent was wicked, and it was etched faintly in censure. She wondered if he’d even notice.

She looked up at her brother, knowing he was considered handsome by everyone female in a position to judge. She saw him anew. She recalled the duke’s bleak, inscrutable gaze out over the green as he made his sordid confession. Picturing her naked brother, for a lark, crawling in and out of Lady Abigail Beasley’s window and bed simply because he could.

“Genevieve . . . the duke . . .”

“Yes?”

“He isn’t . . .” Ian was clearly in a bit of a torment over choosing the next word “. . . troubling you?” He almost mumbled it.

“
Troubling
me? Troubling
me
?” She was amused.

He wasn’t. “Yes, inflected in every way. Is he troubling you?”

“Why do you think the duke would consider
troubling
me?” She gave him the widest-eyed innocence she was capable of giving.

“He’s been known for . . . troubling women.”

“If that’s a euphemism for seducing women, Ian, for heaven’s sake, say it. I can hardly live beneath this roof with all of you without absorbing some of your conversation. And no. He has not
troubled
me.”

Ian was laughing now.

“You know I love you, Genevieve . . .” he began.

She rolled her eyes. “For God’s sake,
Ian
, I just ate breakfast.”

He grinned at her, unable not to. And despite their transgressions it was always rewarding to make her witty brothers grin.

“The duke has been all that is correct and polite, I assure you. I wonder that you’re not more concerned about Mars and the flowers.”

“Should I be?” he asked sharply and rather dangerously. The grin vanished.

“Oh, Ian. Please. I am a woman
grown
. And everyone knows I am not the one in the family who involves herself in mischief. I’m the sensible one.”

Perversely she hoped he’d disagree. Or perhaps open the matter for discussion, at least.

He didn’t. He just sighed.

She put a hand on his arm. “I
promise
I shall send for you the moment I need any manner of protection from overzealous suitors and the like.”

Her poor brother did look as though he was losing sleep. She wondered how soon it would be before he was climbing in another woman’s window. She suspected “never” might be the answer.

“So the duke
isn’t
courting you?”

“Such a preoccupation with the duke! To my knowledge, the duke isn’t courting me. His conversation is hardly loverlike. Though he did seem to take an inordinate interest in legal matters. Matters of inheritance, specifically.”

“Legal matters?”

“Yes.” She darted up the stairs and called over her shoulder. “. . . Specifically he was curious whether or not you’d made a will.”