What I Did For a Duke (4 page)

“The Duke of Falconbridge.”

To their astonishment, their brothers greeted this news with resounding silence.

Olivia murmured in Genevieve’s ear, “I wonder what’s wrong with Ian. He looks pale.”

Chapter 3

T
he duke stood in the Everseas’ echoing marble foyer, his feet planted on the north end of an enormous inlaid marble compass star, a mosaic in shades of gold. A team of efficient liveried footmen had borne away his hat and coat and walking stick and trunk, a groom and several excited stable boys had taken breathless custody of his carriage and team. A cluster of housemaids stood peering ’round the landing down at him. He gained an impression of bright eyes, knuckles stuffed in mouths to stifle giggles, mob caps quivering as they whispered excitedly.

He was always watched. He was accustomed to it.

“Pardon, Your Grace!”

He dodged another pair of footmen staggering under armloads of incongruously dazzling flowers. Brilliant hothouse blooms in oranges and crimsons, like a Tahitian sunset on stalks.

“Try the green salon,” Jacob Eversea called after them as he bustled into the foyer. “Ask Mrs. Eversea where you ought to put it.”

“Olivia,” Mr. Eversea explained cryptically, turning back to the duke. “Delighted, honored to have you with us, Moncrieffe. You couldn’t have written ahead at a more opportune time. We’re having a ball! A modest affair, of course, compared to the London occasions, but we do have a suitable room for it and enthusiastic company expected. I do hope you’ll be comfortable while you’re with us. And we can most certainly get up a card game from all the neighbor men on Saturday. Couldn’t be happier you suggested it. They’ll all be honored to lose their blunt to you. I’ll send word ’round the ballroom.”

“Thank you, Eversea. I couldn’t hope for more satisfactory accommodations.”

He’d been up the stairs and down again swiftly. His chamber was large and primarily brown and comfortable indeed, softness everywhere in the carpets and curtains and counterpane, but he’d merely brushed the dust off before he’d inquired of a housemaid as to where Ian Eversea slept.

And then he’d slipped in the room and deposited Ian’s other boot on the end of the bed. The boot pistol had blown a ragged hole through the toe of it when it landed a good thirty or so feet outside of Abigail’s window.

J
acob Eversea and the duke looked up then when they heard footsteps on the marble stairs.

“Where the devil did this come from?” Ian’s voice preceded him down the stairs. He was holding the boot.

He halted so quickly on the bottom stair when he saw the duke he nearly toppled off.

“I believe you’re acquainted with my son Ian?” Jacob turned to the duke.

Ian thrust the boot behind his back and froze, motionless as any pointing hunting spaniel. He stared.

At last he came down from the step and walked across the cold marble as gingerly as if it were hot coals. And then he bowed low. The instinct was a reflex in Everseas, anyway, and doubtless bought him time to think. When he was upright his complexion was nearly indistinguishable in color from the marble.

Whatever he’d thought on the way down hadn’t comforted him in the least.

“Our paths have crossed.” The duke addressed this to Jacob and bowed low, too, but his bow was a parody. “How is your horse, Ian?”

“Present,” Ian said faintly after a moment. His horse had found its way home, from Lady Abigail’s house, in other words.

“Clever horse,” the duke acknowledged.

Unlike his master,
were the unspoken words.

“What brings you to Eversea House, Moncrieffe?”

Very polite the question, but strain pitched it nearly an octave higher than Ian’s usual voice. His nostrils had flared; white lines made dents on either side of them.

“Opportunity,” Moncrieffe said simply.

And smiled the sort of smile that wolves do, when they have their prey neatly cornered.

W
hile the duke was upstairs brushing off the dust and planting a boot at the foot of Ian’s bed, Genevieve had made a futile dash for her bedroom. Colin had slipped away to his home, Ian had made it up the stairs, Olivia had slipped away . . .

But her mother was lying in wait, and Genevieve had been captured in the foyer just before the duke arrived.

What did the Everseas know about the Duke of Falconbridge? If you asked Jacob, he would say the man had a knack for brilliantly choosing investments and had not yet thrown in his lot with Isaiah Redmond’s Mercury Club, which meant he might very well make an excellent partner in business endeavors for Jacob. He approved of his cattle—six matched bays—and of his new barouche, and even of his reputation, as the Eversea family closet rattled with skeletons and rumors swirled smokelike around how they’d acquired their undeniably immense fortune. He approved of the duke’s gambling skills and was looking forward to plying his own against him.

If one would have asked
Genevieve
about the duke, she would have said she knew that he was very tall. Fair-skinned. Dark haired. Exuded an impatience and importance so thoroughly intimidating it preceded him into rooms like a gust of strong wind. Even when he was motionless for long periods of time—she’d seen him standing at balls, hands folded behind his back, like Wellington surveying a battlefield, the crowds eddying around him at a polite and careful distance as surely as if he were surrounded by a moat, he somehow always looked poised to dash. He had overlooked her, both literally (she was petite) and figuratively, at the two balls at which they’d been mutually present, and she had known only relief. She didn’t know whether he was handsome, though certainly women thought his aura of danger had its appeal and no one shielded their eyes in horror in his presence. She simply never intended to look at him long enough to decide for herself.

She knew, of course, it was said that he’d poisoned his wife when she mysteriously died and he’d inherited all of her money, that he’d allegedly dueled with swords, that he’d once shot a man for pleasure, that he’d ruined more than one man who’d dared deal dishonestly with him, sometimes
years
later, which meant he’d undertaken it with cold-blooded thoroughness and planning. He’d been engaged for a time to Lady Abigail Beasley and now he wasn’t.

And he was standing in the foyer.

He was talking to her father and . . . well, he
appeared
to be smiling. Her father did make people smile; her brothers didn’t come by their roguish charm accidentally. Likely they were discussing barouches or horses or the other sorts of things that bonded men the world over.

And she could see, leaning over on the second landing of the stairs, a cluster of housemaids avidly staring and whispering, like mice watching a cat. As though safety could be had in numbers.

When they heard Isolde Eversea’s slippers clacking over the marble they scattered.

Her pretty mother bore down upon Genevieve, looking bright and purposeful, which could not bode well.

“A word, Genevieve, love, if you will.”

She was steered into the green sitting room, called as such because it was . . . primarily green. Shades of it were everywhere in the delicate curving furniture, a hearty plump settee, long velvet curtains roped in silver tasseled cord. A soothing room. Apart from the explosion of color provided by a bouquet of exotic blooms in the corner.

“Good grief. It looks like a blessed jungle in here. But the young men will continue to send flowers,” her mother said, and gingerly touched a spiky leaf on the bouquet.

Olivia’s admirers were legion and persistent, primarily because Olivia was beautiful and indifferent.

It wasn’t as though Genevieve never received flowers. They were generally of the sentimental sort, however, or of the pale and delicate sort, rather than the . . .
magnificent
sort. Her suitors assumed Genevieve Eversea would prefer flowers pulled up out of the ground in meadows. Seasonal. Infinitely more practical and sweet and
quiet
.

And then Isolde peered at Genevieve. “What’s wrong?” she demanded sharply.

“Naught, Mama.”

“You look ill. White as a sheet and green ’round the gills. We’ll have Harriet make you a simple.”

So she was to be savagely heartbroken and then poisoned by one of their cook’s noxious herbal brews in the space of a few hours? Dante would find inspiration in this day.

“Then I truly
will
be ill, Mama,” she pointed out with quiet desperation.

There was no hope for it; her mother had decided upon her course and that was that.

“It’s a wonderful day for a walk, don’t you think, Genevieve?” she said with suspicious brightness.

“No,” she said quickly.

As far as Genevieve was concerned, horrible things happened on walks. She would consent to take a walk only if it ended at the Cliffs of Dover. Far, far away from here.

“I know you’ve been out, but another dose of fresh air would do you a world of good.” Her mother was deaf only to her own objective. “I think it would be lovely if you young people take the duke”—meaning the duke of course
wasn’t
, strictly speaking, young—“out to see the folly and perhaps the ruins. Before the rains arrive and turn that hill just before it into mud.”

Genevieve was aghast. Oh. Please, please,
please
no. She was fit only for shutting the door of her room, lying sideways on her bed, and holding herself tightly to muffle the pain of loss. She didn’t think she would cry. Not yet. Perhaps later she would.

Now every sound, every sight, every sensation, landed on her and stung. She was raw. Speaking to the Duke of Falconbridge seemed inconceivable.

Honestly, she should visit her cousin Adam, the vicar, to review with him her sins—surely if she’d committed any they were modest?—to see which of them might have resulted in her sudden plunge into purgatory. Perhaps it was a cumulative sort of thing. Perhaps if the little sins went too long un-repented the punishment could only be dramatic and sudden.

“Mama, the duke can hardly wish to see the folly and the ruins. Doubtless a dozen follies and ruins feature on his properties, and all of them are greater follies and more ruinous than ours. I’m certain he’d rather spend time with Papa.”

And do things men nearer to that age do. Smoke cigars. Complain of gout.

This last thought was mere indulgence in petulance. Papa was actually quite fit unless one quibbled over a slight thickening at the middle. He hadn’t any gout. His sons were tall and lanky, and every last one of them was taller than he, and Colin was the tallest by an inch.

And the duke was hardly Papa’s age. Yet.

But they’d taken the duke’s hat, the footmen. She could see from where she stood a frost of gray at each temple. He wore his hair a little longer than was strictly fashionable, though he had plenty of it, and most of it was black. Perhaps when one reached his age one simply stopped caring about fashion. Though his clothes were impeccably tailored, emphasizing his lean grace.

And she knew he did have a folly. At
least
one, given how much of England he was alleged to own. Genevieve was familiar with one of the duke’s properties—Rosemont—as she’d gone to tour it once when he was away at one of his other vast tracts of lands. It was surprisingly modest by duke terms, a redbrick manor in West Sussex presiding over a collection of softly swelling hills, which surrounded a lake populated by enormous, irritable swans and overhung with willows. The garden had been brilliant with its namesake blooms and the fountain in the courtyard featured a lasciviously grinning stone satyr performing an arabesque and spitting water high into the air.

She’d found it delightful. It’s pocket-sized, whimsical beauty hardly seemed to suit him, but then he normally spent his time in London and likely had all but forgotten he owned it.

Her mother lowered her voice. “He is lately . . .
disengaged
, as you know.”

And then Genevieve fully understood what her mother was contemplating.

And it was much, much worse than a stroll.

“Mama . . . I feel
terrible
,” she modified rapidly. “I feel . . .” What would convince her mother? “. . . I feel faint.” It wasn’t entirely a lie, so it wasn’t another sin. How did one feign a swoon? She placed the back of her hand on her forehead. Swoons seemed to begin that way. She fumbled for the arm of the settee with her other hand, and sank slowly into it.

She was petite, but she had the constitution of a plow horse. She’d never fainted in her life.

Her mother narrowed her eyes, eyes so very similar to her own. She missed almost nothing, Mama, but she was immovable.

“I’ll own you are not yourself, Genevieve, but I’m inclined to blame whatever it is you did or didn’t eat for breakfast. You are fit enough to walk with a duke, and you are always lovely, even when pale.”

“But Mama—I do have a terrible—” What part of her ought to ache cripplingly enough to excuse her from the walk but not require a frantic messenger sent to fetch the doctor? She could hardly say
soul
. “—headache.”

“Unless you can demonstrate to me that you’re missing a limb necessary for performing a
stroll
, you will go, Genevieve. You will be kind to the man, as he may have suffered a loss and perhaps be . . . consolable. Inclined to remedy his loss.”

“But Mama, he’s . . . I can’t . . . but he . . .”

“. . . is a man who can keep you in the manner to which you’ve become accustomed and do honor to this family. I know you are a bit. . . . well, a bit
shy
. . . my dear . . . but this will do you good.”

Her mother gave her back an implacable I-know-what’s-good-for-you-better-than-you-do gaze.

It was disorienting. How was it that she hadn’t noticed this before?
Nobody
knew. Nobody knew what was best for her and what she wanted. And why did anyone believe she was shy? She wasn’t the
least
shy.
Quiet
was
not
synonymous with
shy
.

She must have looked stricken, for her mother sighed.

“For heaven’s sake, my love, we aren’t speaking of indenturing you to the man. It’s one walk. It needn’t dictate the course of forever and I’m not one of those mamas who orchestrate their children’s lives, though I’m of a mind to change. After all, every woman needs an avocation,” she added darkly.