An Unlikely Duchess (13 page)

He knew what was right for a lady, and he would impose his will on her.

Josephine tossed her brush back into her valise after dragging it through her hair twenty times—Betty always said that fifty was the minimum allowable, but who had the time to be brushing hair half the night? She was feeling thoroughly and satisfyingly aggrieved.

And a little guilty. Mr. Villiers had, after all, just given up two days of his life to cater to her whims and was about to give up two more in order to take her back home again—where he would doubtless be killed by Papa and lectured by Grandpapa.

Josephine yawned suddenly and hugely. If they went back home, she would never see her jewels again. And that villain would escape scot-free. It was not good enough. Oh, it would just not do at all.

She yawned again at great and noisy length. She would have to sleep. There was no choice in the matter. She would think in the morning. She would come up with some plan then. She was not quite defeated yet, despite her earlier depression. Oh, not by any means.

But lying on her bed, her arms crossed over her waist, staring upward, did not after all bring the expected oblivion. And where was Mr. Villiers going to sleep? Probably on the floor again if he had any inkling of how well their experiment at sharing a bed had turned out the night before.

He should not have to sleep on the floor, she thought with a rush of contrition for all the uncharitable thoughts she had had of him in the past half hour. Indeed, he should not be inconvenienced at all. She should be the one to face all the discomfort. And if she was doomed to a sleepless night anyway, then it might as well be on the floor so that Mr. Villiers could sleep on the bed.

Five minutes later, she was lying on the floor beside the bed, her cloak under her, one pillow beneath her head, and one blanket covering her. It was not even remotely comfortable. But she would not utter one sound of complaint. When Mr. Villiers came back to the room, she would pretend to be sleeping, and she would lie quiet all night long.

After a few minutes the floor no longer seemed quite so uncomfortable. And she really was very tired. She turned onto her side and curled up warmly beneath the blanket.

And then suddenly she was a little child again and had been naughty and had hidden in the long cupboard in the schoolroom. And Papa had found her there and was not after all cross but only relieved that he had found her safe and sound when he had thought her lost. And she was telling him that she had broken a priceless vase in the morning room, a vase that could never be replaced. But instead of scolding and punishing, he scooped her up in his arms and called her his half-pint and told her that she was more precious to him than any vase.

She felt like crying because he was always so loving and kind to her while she was often thoughtless and disobedient. But those safe arms were not to be resisted and she curled into them and reached up in protest to cling to his neck when he set her down.

“Paul,” she said, “I was quite comfortable there. I don’t want you to sleep there. You should have the bed.”

His face was very close to hers because of the hold she still had of his neck. And his one arm was still beneath her shoulders and the other beneath her knees.

“Sh,” he said softly. “Go back to sleep.”

“Don’t sleep on the floor,” she said. “I feel guilty. Sleep on the bed, Paul. There is lots of room.”

“Hush,” he murmured, his nice gray eyes smiling at her. “Just go to sleep and don’t worry about me.” And he leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.

Josephine released her hold of him and closed her eyes. And she curled over onto her side when he slid his arm from beneath her and covered her with the blanket. He was Mr. Villiers, not Papa. And she had called him Paul. Oh, dear. He had lifted her to the bed and covered her up. And he had kissed her on the forehead.

She knew the difference between her dream and reality, but she would not allow the reality to be more than a dream. She kept breathing slowly and deeply and kept her eyes closed. And she listened to the comforting sounds of Mr. Villiers moving quietly about the room before settling to rest in the bed on the floor that she had made for herself.

She would not let herself wake up. If she was sleeping, she could still feel free to enjoy being with him more than she would enjoy being with the Hennessys.

Chapter 8

The duke awoke from a dream in which he had already torturously considered a dozen courses he might have taken over the last couple of days that would have been a thousand times more decorous than the one he had actually taken. Unfortunately, even in the moment of waking, he could not think of even one of the dozen. He had a headache instead.

Josephine Middleton was kneeling on the floor beside him, her hair wild and quite glorious about her face and down over her shoulders and bosom. Her face was alight and her mouth in motion.

“...silly,” she was saying. “There was plenty of room for us both.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, “but the floor was quite comfortable.” Why was it, he thought, that sleepless nights always ended in the most delightful slumber after dawn? And why was there always someone to wake one on such mornings?

“I have had the most splendid idea,” she said. “I cannot think why neither of us thought of it yesterday.”

Mitford closed his eyes and tried to pretend that he was still dreaming. The floor felt almost cozy.

“Somewhere between here and the last inn Mr. Porterhouse disappeared,” she said. “Right?”

“Right,” he muttered.

“And he cannot really have disappeared into thin air, can he?” she said.

“No.” He tried to catch onto that thin and fast disappearing thread of sleep.

“We know he did not turn back or we would have seen him,” she said. “Right?”

“Right.”

“Then he must have turned off along another road,” she said, sitting back on her heels and looking down at him in triumph.

“He did,” the duke said.

“Well then,” she said, “it is simple. All we have to do is turn along every single road and laneway between here and the last inn and drive along it until we find someone we may question. We must remember to look on both sides of this road, of course.”

The duke, admitting regretfully to himself that he was doomed to awaken and begin a new day, was suddenly profoundly grateful for the thirst of a certain burly farmer that had brought him to the inn the night before. Good Lend, they could spend weeks exploring every cart track over the previous five miles of highway. He opened his eyes.

“I haven’t woken you, have I?” Josephine Middleton asked him with a wide and apologetic smile.

“Not at all,” he said. “I would have been up long ago if I had not been afraid of waking you.”

“Oh,” she said, “you need not be afraid of that. I am always up early.”

The duke’s mental eye peered gloomily along the years ahead of them. Instead of Henry and his discreet cough as he brought the shaving water, he could look forward to his duchess kneeling on his bed beside him, prattling about some harebrained idea that no one but she would ever even dream of.

“And if we do not find him after this search,” she said magnanimously, “then I shall allow you to take me back home. Is that fair?”

“I know where he is,” he said, shifting position, and finding from the reaction of all his bones and muscles that the floor had not, after all, been a comfortable bed. He ran a hand through his hair and reminded himself that he must have it cut the very next time he was in some civilized part of the world.

For once she was silent. She knelt beside him, her eyes wide, her hands clasped together. He found her nearness quite disconcerting and immediately shut his mind to the memory of the night before when he had lifted her to the bed and almost been mad enough to join her there when she had looked up at him with such sleepy invitation and clung to his neck. Good Lord!

“He has gone to a house party at Lord Parleigh’s,” he said.

“Seven miles away. He was seen by a farmer in the middle of an altercation with some cows. And since Lord Parleigh’s is along the same road, and he is apparently always organizing large house parties, it is well nigh certain that that is where our man was going.”

“Then we have him,” she said, her eyes shining. “At last. Oh, I can hardly wait to see his face when I confront him.”

“Not a good plan at all,” Mitford said hastily. “He would crush you up and eat you for breakfast.”

“Well,” she said, “if you are suggesting that I return home now out of fear, sir, you do not know me at all, I do assure you.”

“I think I am getting to know you, Miss Middleton,” he said, gazing gloomily down at his borrowed shirt. Now if he had had any sense at all, he would have changed for the night into one of his own wrinkled shirts. He could have done so while she was sleeping. Unfortunately, he and his good sense seemed to have parted company more than two days before.

“You shall take me to him, if you please,” she said, “and I shall get my jewels and tell him exactly what I think of him and then you shall take me home as I know you are longing to do and can be on your way with my thanks to wherever you were going.”

“That is not at all a good idea, ma’am,” Mitford said, “It would be far better for me to take you home and tell your father where Porterhouse may be found. If it is a house party he is attending, doubtless he will be there for a week or more.”

“You are suggesting that I go home now when I am within a few miles of Mr. Porterhouse?” Josephine asked, all wide-eyed incredulity. “What utter nonsense.”

Mitford closed his eyes briefly. Now what he ought to have done was said nothing about knowing where Porterhouse was until he saw her father. Oh, Lord, he was totally out of his depth in this sort of situation.

“I have a better idea,” Josephine Middleton was saying, and he had no doubt for a moment that she was right, It was bound to be a suitably insane idea. “We must accept the Hennessys’ invitation and go to Hawthorn House. It is not very far from here. Then we can pay a call on Mr. Porterhouse. Will he not be surprised?”

The Duke of Mitford mentally groaned. He sat up—what had he been doing lying all this while with a young and single lady kneeling over him, anyway?”

“Lord,” he said, one hand to his brow. “How can we go to the Hennessys’ still pretending to be man and wife?” And what was he doing even considering going there instead of putting his ducal foot down very firmly and tooling off with her in the direction of Rutland Park?

“We seemed to do quite nicely the night before last,” she said, having the grace at least to blush.

“Well,” he said, grabbing his coat and his bag, “having once given up my sanity, I suppose it would be madness to try to reclaim it now.”

“I knew you would agree,” she said, jumping to her feet and clapping her hands. “You are such a kind gentleman. 1 know that I will be quite safe with you and that I will recover my jewels too. And if Mr. Porterhouse has other ideas, well then, you will knock him down again.” She smiled.

The Duke of Mitford paused, his hand on the knob of the door, and looked back at her, a rumpled, diminutive little fiend surrounded by a large halo of fair hair. A young little brainless innocent who had just spent the third night in a row with him and was smiling and gazing at him as if he were a mighty Hercules.

He would probably be a pile of mashed bones on the floor if Porterhouse ever got his hands on him without being taken by surprise and without an angry young lady with a large china bowl standing directly behind him.

He let himself out of the room and blew out his breath from puffed cheeks. Could life possibly get any more complicated? If he ever got back to London in one piece, he was going to be a candidate for Bedlam. Instead of which, of course, he was going to have to lead to the altar yet another candidate for the same institution. Well, it was as well to keep insanity all within one family, he supposed. They were almost certain to have very interesting children.

***

Sir Thomas Burgess slept late. It did not matter since he would not be going far that day, and indeed would be going nowhere at all until his carriage was repaired. But he did regret the fact that he had missed his friend Mitford that morning. He would have enjoyed sitting through breakfast in the dining room, no glimmering of recognition on his face while, he took a closer look at Paul’s intended bride.

Mitford traveling incognito and alone with a young lady! The two of them eloping and on their way to Gretna Green. Sir Thomas stood in the innyard watching his horses being groomed, his coat collar turned up against the chill of the morning, and grinned to himself. He would not have believed it if he had not seen it with his own eyes Mitford had never done anything daring or indiscreet in his life. Never. Even that mistress he had had for a few years had been highly respectable.

Who could the little chit be? He would give a great deal to know. But then he would know eventually, he supposed. But why the deuce did the Duke of Mitford have to elope with anyone? It made no sense.

He wondered with another grin if there were an irate father in hot pursuit, a pistol clutched in each hand, a cutlass between his teeth.

He watched idly and with renewed amusement the old-fashioned carriage that pulled in from the road under the care of the unlikeliest coachman he had clapped eyes on for a long while. He looked more as if he belonged in a boxing ring than at the ribbons of a private coach.

Sir Thomas pursed his lips in appreciation at the golden-haired beauty who stepped down into the yard with the coachman’s assistance. A slim and pale creature, she was, with hair as golden as the summer sun peeping from beneath her bonnet.

“You go inside and ’ave some tea and vittles,” the bald giant said to her in such tender tones that Sir Thomas wondered hilariously if perhaps he was her father.

“But we have scarce begun, our journey,” a tall, fair-haired young man protested impatiently, vaulting out of the coach after the lady. “We will never catch up to them at this rate, Sam.” Sir Thomas watched as the young lady crossed the cobbles toward him, glancing at him with candid blue eyes before her lashes lowered over them, and disappeared into the inn. Ah, delectable. But his reverie was disturbed by the fair young man, who stopped to address him.