An Ideal Duchess (3 page)

             
Their escape was not to be, and the men congratulated themselves on a fine shoot as the keepers went to retrieve the partridges’ limp bodies to add them to the birds stuffed into the game bags slung around their shoulders. Amanda shuddered. She was not particularly sensitive about this form of sport, but it could be rather gut churning to see the method in which dinner arrived on her plate every evening.

             
“It’s time for luncheon, isn’t it?” Sir Leyland clapped her father on the shoulders. “I’ve worked up a hearty appetite, Vandewater.”

             
“Amanda, my dear—”

             
“I’ve arranged everything, Papa,” She brushed some dirt from the sleeve of her father’s tweed jacket. “Mother and the other ladies are arriving by cart to join us near those Roman ruins we passed by a few miles back.”

             
“Miss Vandewater,” Lord Pelham held a partridge in his hands.

             
To her acute dismay and discomfort, he bent on one knee in the muddy field and held the dead partridge up to her. “A tribute for my lady.”

             
As declarations went, this was rather exceptional, and Amanda tried her best not to laugh as the baron looked up at her, obviously expecting her to be flattered. Ah, well, she smiled sardonically and accepted the partridge, what was the harm?

*          *          *

              “Lady Hesketh, tell me about the Duke of Malvern.” Amanda singled out Sir Leyland’s wife as the one person certain to have mentally cataloged every peer of the realm.

             
Her ladyship paused in the act of extending her champagne glass for the footman to fill. She smiled slowly, her thin lips stretched over her rabbity teeth. “Have you spotted your quarry?”

             
“Not every American girl comes to England in search of a husband,” Amanda flicked her napkin open and laid it in her lap. “Lord Pelham mentioned the duke in connection with a squire named Challoner.”

             
“Well, Miss Vandewater, you could certainly aim no higher, not with your looks—or your dowry.” Lady Hesketh’s voice rose in query on the last word.

             
Amanda smiled blandly, though she inwardly despaired of people affixing a price tag to her wrist the moment they realized she was American. This was not the first time conversations hedged around the exact amount of her prospective marriage settlement. For people with an abhorrence of money, the English were quite frank about their curiosity over her dollars and cents. Though, she remembered, the French were even more so—a girl without a
dot
was a girl without any whiff of matrimonial prospects.

             
“And if I were, as you say, aiming for him, what could you share about the duke?”

             
“Not much, unfortunately,” Lady Hesketh made a moue of distaste before sipping her champagne. “I’m not in those circles—the Duchess was a Lady of the Bedchamber in the early ‘nineties.”

             
“So he is married?”

             
“Oh, no,” Lady Hesketh’s laughter was as false as her fringe. “The lady in question is his mother. The duke has recently come into his title though…there was something unfortunate about it.”

             
“Yes?” Amanda leaned forward.

             
“There was a brother…” Lady Hesketh shook her head. “But that is all I can reveal—as I said, I’m not in those circles.”

             
Amanda sat back, narrowing her eyes a bit at Lady Hesketh, who, by the calculating twist of her lips, was deliberately withholding information, dangling it before Amanda’s nose like a carrot. She was not interested enough in furthering the acquaintance between herself and the woman, and turned her attention back to the luncheon spread across the long table set up by the servants, who stood at a discreet distance behind them.

             
She glanced across the table at her mother, who was engrossed in whatever Lord Pelham and Mrs. Markham-Sands were saying, and then to her father, who smoked a fat cigar while discussing the day’s shoot with Sir Leyland and Mr. Markham-Sands. They were in their element, particularly her mother, who fairly bloomed with good health away from the noxious elements of the clannish New York society.

             
She crumbled a bit of the pastry from the meat pasty on her plate, already more than conflicted by her desires. She was anxious to please her parents, yet independent enough to want to please herself. However, what things she found precisely pleasing were just as unknown as…as what frock she was going to wear when she went in search of this Challoner fellow. For, the more she thought about her encounter with the two “laborers” that afternoon, the more certain she became that the insouciant, strikingly handsome one who kissed her hand was he.

             
Amanda straightened, having already decided on her plan of action when she returned to Foxcote with her mother.

             
The luncheon party broke up shortly thereafter, and as the men trudged back to their partridge shooting and the ladies trudged to the cart, the footmen tasked with clearing and folding the table to place in the cart, Amanda sidled up to the coachman and patted the velvety nose of one of the horse’s hooked to the team.

             
“Squire Challoner’s place isn’t too far away from here, is it?”

             
“No, miss,” The coachman chewed placidly on a piece of straw. “About four miles across the meadow; you couldn’t miss it, being near the village.”

             
Amanda filed that away, and then noted that Challoner was correct—they had been trespassing on his property.

             
“Thank you, Jones.”

             
The coachman tugged on his forelock and she went to join the ladies in the back of the cart, and as they started back to Foxcote, she hatched a plan for escaping her mother’s detection and paying a call on this squire and his injured companion.

             
Bron flinched at the iodine the doctor dabbed on the gash in his forehead and twisted to see around the man’s shoulders.

             
“You just left my bloody glider?”

             
Bim merely crossed his legs and stretched in the chair beside the bed. “What was I supposed to do? Bring the blasted thing back here while you possibly bled to death?”

             
“Well, no,” Bron said grumpily, hating the logic behind his friend’s decision. “But you could have gone back to fetch it when Dr. Satterthwaite arrived.”

             
“I intend to, but it’s not exactly high on my list of priorities—especially when it nearly got you killed.”

             
Bron waved his hand in dismissal. Bim was always going on about the dangers of flight. However, what was the thrill of pushing and testing limitations without an edge of danger? He scowled up at Dr. Satterthwaite as the man wound some gauze around his head as though the wound were truly life threatening. He was more irritated with the splint and gauze covering his left arm from elbow to wrist and caught in a sling: a fracture. That would keep him grounded for at least six weeks, six precious weeks in which some other aeronaut could solve the mystery of flying heavier-than-air machines.

             
“There, Your Grace,” Dr. Satterthwaite stood and admired his handiwork. “I’m leaving this tincture of laudanum that I advise you to take at least once a day—and you will rest. If he experiences any headaches or dizziness, you’d better fetch me at once, Anthony.”

             
“Of course, Dr. Satterthwaite,” Bim rose from his chair.

             
“No, I shall see myself out—I don’t trust His Grace will remain abed very long, and your continued presence will assure me of at least ten minutes of obedience.”

             
Dr. Satterthwaite shook his head and sighed as he bent to pick up his Gladstone bag. Bron felt rather guilty for his impatience with infirmities. Dr. Satterthwaite had patched him up more times than he could count during his youthful pranks, and kept the worst of them from his father.

             
“Thanks, Satterthwaite, you’re a brick,” He said wryly.

             
The doctor rolled his eyes heavenward in exasperation, but smiled. “I’ll see you boys later—that is, if you happen to get into any other accidents.”

             
Dr. Satterthwaite opened the door to Bron’s temporary bedroom and settled his bowler on his head, pausing when a housemaid appeared in the doorframe. Molly curtseyed and darted out of the way to allow Dr. Satterthwaite to pass before entering the bedroom.

             
“Mr. Challoner, sir, there is a lady to see you.”

             
Bron raised his eyebrow at Bim. “Don’t tell me you’ve taken to inviting your women to the family pile?”

             
“As if I’d dare,” Bim smirked and rose to his full height. “Not with my status as an upstanding Member of Parliament.”

             
“That’s never stopped any MP—Parnell, Dilke...”

             
“I’d rather not see the name of Challoner fall into infamy,”

             
“It’s too late for Townsend,” Bron said darkly.

             
Bim’s mouth twisted in sympathy before he returned his attention to Molly. “Did the lady send her card?”

             
“Oh, no sir,” Molly curtseyed. “But she said she’d made your acquaintance today.”

             
Bron frowned curiously at Bim’s bark of laughter. He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, only to arouse a spell of dizziness and nausea that had him curse Dr. Satterthwaite for his advice. He glanced up at Bim, who grinned.

             
“Who is she?”

             
“Bring her up, Molly,” Bim said to the housemaid, who curtsied once more and departed.

             
“Well?” Bron lay back on the bed, deciding to take the doctor’s advice.

             
“Someone who, I hope, will be very amusing.”

             
He narrowed his eyes: judging by Bim’s definition of amusement, this mystery woman could be anything from a tattooed circus act to a dark-eyed houri stolen from an Egyptian harem. The vision that sailed into the room fell in a category all her own: dangerous. Her eyes went immediately to Bim, who, true to form, took her hand in some courtly, old-fashioned gesture calculated to win the hearts of whatever woman he chose to pursue. The vision grinned at him, and Bron rolled his eyes at their mutual acknowledgement of one another’s incredible attractiveness. He wasn’t overly aware of his appearance, but instances like this reminded him of his unruly hair that could only be described as ginger, his long, lanky—almost gawky—form, and the smattering of freckles a long-ago governess tried to scrub from his face with a ripe, eye-stinging lemon.

             
In contrast, Bim was lean and broad-shouldered, with neatly pomaded black hair and an interesting, heavy-lidded face. The type of face women went wild over, to the detriment of his studies. Bron flicked a gaze at the vision, her preoccupation with his friend affording him a brief opportunity to just look at her. He quickly cataloged her slender elegance in a tweed tailored suit, her height, the beautiful wave of her golden hair, and the strength of her classical profile. He flushed, chagrined by the intensity of his private scrutiny, and then flushed more deeply when her gaze fell on him.

             
Her eyes were a fathomless blue, a piece of the cerulean sky over the Vale of Stroud. She smiled, a superior little smirk that tilted the corner of her lips and deepened the dimple creasing her cheek. The smile of a woman well accustomed to acknowledgement, attention, and admiration. A woman who then dismissed the admirer once she deigned to recognize his or her homage. Bron’s flush faded to a flinty chill as he settled back into the bed and smiled sardonically, arching a brow.

             
“I knew you weren’t a pair of common laborers!”

             
“Oh, and what led you to this conclusion?” Bim asked.

             
“I suppose I ought to say it was your noble brow or something, but unfortunately, I don’t study the science of phrenology.”

             
The young woman boldly sat on the edge of Bron’s bed, her voice lowering to a husky, intimate tone. “No, what gave you away were your clothes—I recognize the hand of an expert tailor in spite of your general similarity to the surrounding farmers.”

             
“Well, since you so cleverly saw through our disguise, would you care to join us for tea?”