An Unlikely Duchess (4 page)

***

Josephine was feeling frantic. It was late in the day already and the carriage was broken. And there were still ten miles to go. And why had Mr. Porterhouse secured her a bedchamber instead of just a private parlor? Was he expecting that they would have to spend the night at the inn?

Oh, dear, what a coil she was in if that happened. Papa would not like it at all. Neither would Aunt Winifred. Or Grandpapa. She had got herself into some scrapes during her twenty years— indeed, she had got herself into a great many scrapes—but none quite as nasty as this one. Why in heaven’s name had she not at least brought a maid with her? The taproom had been full and rather noisy when she came in. It grew noisier as she paced her room, with the result that she was reluctant to go downstairs to investigate the long delay. But it was growing dusk outside, she saw every time her steps took her past the window—every ten seconds, that was.

When there was a knock at the door, she threw it open and only just restrained herself from hurling herself into Mr. Porterhouse’s arms, so great was her relief. But his face was as serious as could be, and he stepped inside the room and closed the door behind his back and set her valise against the wall.

“I am afraid the carriage will not be ready for travel until tomorrow, Miss Middleton,” he said. “I am most awfully sorry. I feel quite dreadful.”

“You feel dreadful!” Josephine could feel only panic. “But what are you going to do about it, sir? There must be another carriage for hire.”

“There is not,” he said. “And even if there were, I would be loath to endanger your life on dark roads. No, I am very much afraid, ma’am, that we must spend the night here.”

“But Papa will kill me!” she said, her squeak sounding very undignified to her own ears. “And Aunt Winifred will turn me off. And Grandpapa will lecture me for a week.”

“But perhaps it is for the best after all,” he said. “Even if you go to your aunt’s, the chances are that you will eventually be forced to marry the lecherous Duke of Mitford. My heart bleeds for you at the very thought, ma’am. I have a better idea.”

Hope stilled Josephine.

“You must marry me instead,” Mr. Porterhouse said. “You must know I have a regard for you, ma’am. It is the dearest wish of my heart to rescue you from a bleak future.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Josephine said, her first panic subsiding. “That is the silliest notion I ever heard. We will just have to be on our way as early as possible in the morning, that is all, and hope that everyone’s anger will cool within the next month or so. I suppose it is not the end of the world.”

“We are on the road north,” he said, possessing himself somehow of her hands. “Come with me to Gretna Green, ma’am. There we may marry and you will be safe both from your lecherous suitor and from the wrath of your family. They will have no more power over you once you are my wife.”

“You are serious!” she said in some surprise. “You are indeed a very kind gentleman, but there is no need whatsoever to make such a sacrifice, I do assure you. My papa is not a monster.”

“But your reputation will be in ruins after tonight,” he said. “Do you not realize that? You
must
marry me. Would it not be better to do so before you have to face your father?”

“Nonsense!” Josephine snatched her hands from his grasp. “We will be spending but one night in the same inn. Papa will understand, though he will scold me for my thoughtlessness and my cowardice in not being able to talk to him instead of fleeing. If you will return to your own room now, sir, I shall settle for the night and be ready to start for my aunt’s at the crack of dawn.”

“But the inn is full,” he said. “I thought you realized that. I took the very last room, ma’am. I am afraid we must share it.”

“Share it?” Josephine stared blankly at him for a moment until incredulity and indignation set her tongue to wagging.

Share a bedchamber at an inn with a single gentleman and one whom she scarcely knew? Who did he think she was? Did he think she knew nothing at all about how to go on?

She felt only increased wrath rather than alarm at first when Mr. Porterhouse turned, locked the door, and pocketed the key. Increased wrath and increased eloquence.

And then he laughed.

And moved toward her.

“Perhaps by tomorrow morning, my sweet,” he said, “there will be no doubt left in your mind that your only course of action is to elope with me.”

Josephine stood her ground. “Your sweet?” she said. “And tell me I have just misunderstood your words. Tell me.”

“Little firebrand,” he said. “I am glad you have chosen fire rather than water. I dislike vaporish females. Come, sweet, admit that I will be a better bargain than the Duke of Mitford. He is what awaits you if you return home or arrive at your aunt’s tomorrow, you know.”

Josephine picked up the pitcher of water from the washstand beside her and hurled it at his head. But her aim had never been good. The pitcher missed him by a lamentable margin and dashed its contents against the wall before smashing into smithereens.

Mr. Porterhouse smiled. “Oh, come now,” he said, “there is no need for all this drama, is there? You have trusted me for a week. Will you not trust me now? I am offering you the haven of my name and protection. You need not be afraid of me.”

Josephine did the most unladylike thing she had ever done. She took aim and spat.

Mr. Porterhouse’s smile faded and he took a step forward.

For the first time, Josephine realized her danger. He must be at least twice her size and it was very obvious from the glint in his eye what was on his mind. And the door—the locked door, to which the key was in his pocket—was on the other side of him.

For very dignity’s sake she tried to be calm. “I shall scream!” she shrieked. “If you do not leave this instant, sir, I shall scream the roof down.”

Mr. Porterhouse took one step closer—there were no more steps to take without walking right over her—and laughed. And he took her upper arms in his powerful hands.

“You will not ravish me!” she shrieked, throwing back her head in defiance. And because it was no longer the time for feminine dignity, she added the most deadly threat of all. “If you try, sir, I shall put my knee where it most hurts.”

“Ah, sweet,” he said, his eyes dancing with merriment, “naughty, naughty.” And his head came down and two wet lips covered her own.

Josephine twisted her head to one side and grimaced. “Don’t!” she said. But those lips were at her throat and at her chin. “Stop it! Oh help, someone.” His lips were at hers again and one large hand held her head steady. “Mmmmmm!” She was suffocating. She was straddling one of his legs and off balance so that it was impossible to carry out her earlier threat. And she would surely vomit all over him if he did not stop.

And then there was a great crash and a great deal of commotion and she recovered herself in time to see a great Hercules of a man, eyes burning, hair flying, and fists flashing, and Mr. Porterhouse was tottering on his feet. Josephine picked up the china bowl by the sheer instinct for survival and brought it down on his head.

She watched him topple to the bed and off it to the floor, where he lay still. And she was aware too of the sounds of shattering china and of raucous merriment from belowstairs.

***

“If you are planning to use your knee on an attacker,” the Duke of Mitford said to a flushed, disheveled, and diminutive female, “it is the most cork-brained thing I ever heard of, ma’am, to tell him so. The whole effectiveness of the weapon depends upon the element of surprise.”

“You are doubtless right, sir,” Josephine said, looking down with some distaste at her fallen foe. “Unfortunately, one does not think quite logically when one is about to be ravished. I shall try to remember next time.”

“Next time?” he said, looking severely down at her torn dress, out of which her bosom was perilously close to falling altogether. Was she a barmaid whose price the gentleman had been unwilling to pay? She did not look or speak like a barmaid. “Do you make a habit of this, then, ma’am?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “It was just a manner of speaking. Please, what are we going to do with him?”

“Is he your husband?” he asked.

“Oh, no,” she said. “He is just Mr. Porterhouse, who was kind enough to offer to accompany me to my Aunt Ermingford’s. Except that I realize now he was not being kind at all and had no intention whatsoever of taking me to my aunt’s. He wanted to trick me into marriage so that he might have my dowry. He did not say as much, but why else would he want to marry me?”

Mitford could think of a few reasons, a couple of them fair to bursting out the front of her torn dress. He did not say as much, but leaned over the insensible Mr. Porterhouse, took him by the lapels of his coat, and lifted his head and shoulders from the floor.

“He is not dead,” he said. “A pity.”

“He was so kind,” she said regretfully. “And such a gentleman.”

“And your mama and papa entrusted you to his care?” the duke asked, removing one of his hands from a lapel in order to slap gently at the unconscious cheeks. He remembered that there was no water left in the room with which to revive the gentleman. He could see it in a dark patch down the wallpaper of the wall adjoining his own.

Suddenly everyone in the taproom below was singing, all off-key.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I am running away. Only to my aunt’s, you understand. But she is to help me deal with Papa and Grandpapa. She will take my part, I do not doubt.”

Mr. Porterhouse groaned and opened his eyes. He stared vacantly at the ceiling. The duke wondered if there was a crack up there, as there was in his room.

He took a firm grip of the lapels again. “Let me help you up, my friend,” he said grimly, and kept his hold even when the other climbed slowly and obediently to his feet and the duke’s hands were somewhat above the level of his own shoulders. “Does he have any baggage, ma’am?”

“No,” she said. “I would not have allowed him in here with a bag, you may be sure.”

“Take yourself out of this chamber, then,” Mitford said to his half-conscious adversary, “and out of this inn. If I find you anywhere in the vicinity in fifteen minutes’ time, I shall pound you into unconsciousness again and you will wake up to find yourself toothless. Do you understand me?”

“Insolent puppy!” the gentleman said with slurred defiance.

“I am not sure he can walk alone,” Josephine said, a note of interest in her voice.

“Then we will crawl,” the duke said, not removing his eyes from the pale and handsome face above his own. “He has fifteen minutes in which to do it. Or perhaps fourteen.”

“Insolent puppy,” the man said again before doubling up in order to retch. The duke swiftly released his hold on the man’s lapels. “I shall remember you for this.”

“I’m sure you will,” Mitford said. “On your way, my friend.”

Josephine wrinkled her nose after the man had staggered out. “He might at least have used the chamber pot,” she said in disgust. “I shall have to send for a maid to clean up.”

“Where does your aunt live?” Mitford asked the girl, ignoring the smell. “And where does your father live? I shall do myself the honor of conveying you to one place or the other tomorrow.”

“Oh, would you?” she said, brightening. “I really am stranded here without your help, aren’t I? I should have taken a maid and one of Grandpapa’s carriages instead of accepting Mr. Porterhouse’s kind offer. But I did not know at the time, of course, that it was not really a kind offer at all. My Aunt Ermingford lives ten miles away from here and Papa fifteen. You had better take me to my aunt’s, sir. Partly because she is closer and I will be less beholden to you, and partly because Papa would scold and Grandpapa would scold and I would never hear the end of it if I went home.”

“And so they should scold, too,” the duke said, clasping his hands behind his back and thinking that if she were his daughter, he would take her over his knee and wallop her until his hand was too swollen to allow one more stroke.

“Well, yes.” She flashed him a smile and pushed one truant dark blond curl behind her ear—she would be better occupied tucking her bosom more firmly back inside her dress, he thought. “But he did seem a very kind gentleman, you know, and we were to make the journey all in one day. It was just unfortunate that there was trouble with his carriage.”

“It is fortunate that the trouble has now been put suddenly right,” the duke said dryly, rocking back on his heels. “That is doubtless it leaving the innyard now.”

“Oh,” she said, “yes. I suppose it was not broken after all, was it? I did not think of that. But you will take me to my aunt’s, sir? How kind of you.”

Mitford fixed her with a severe eye. “You had better hope that I do not prove to be quite as kind as Mr. Porterhouse,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, and laughed. “I can tell that you are not like him. He is so tall and handsome that I daresay he has learned to be selfish and to think a lot of himself. You are not at all like him, sir.”

The duke rocked back on his heels again. “I think on the whole it would be as well to return you to your father’s house,” he said.

“Oh, no.” She finally looked down at herself, flushed, and tucked herself back inside her tom garment as best she could. “I won’t go back home, sir. Not by any persuasion. Even if it means running away to London and becoming a scullery maid. If I go back home, Papa and Grandpapa will make me marry the Duke of Mitford.”

The Duke of Mitford rocked once more. “Ah,” he said.

“Any fate would be better than that,” she said.

Chapter 3

“Sometimes,” the Viscount Cheamley said to his father, looking up from the note in his hand, “I think perhaps I should have used my hand on that girl when she was growing up. What do you think?”

“I can’t see it would have done any good,” Lord Rutland said. “Jo is just a high-spirited young girl. She means no harm, and no harm ever comes of her mischief. What does it say?” He nodded toward the note.

The viscount looked down and read it again, as if he could not believe the evidence of his own eyes the first time. “The dratted girl has ridden over to Winnie’s,” he said. “Just took it into her head that it was time for a visit, and went.”