Charlotte Louise Dolan (26 page)

She watched with interest as Darius dexterously detached the somewhat soggy widow and seated her in a chair. Then he himself took a chair suitably distant from Amelia, as if wanting to forestall being used again as a watering post.

So much fuss over a lady’s maid, thought Elizabeth. And no concern at all for a helpless baby. Her desire to laugh quite left her as Amelia tearfully explained the full extent of Elizabeth’s treachery.

“I fail to see the problem,” Darius said when the dowager duchess had finally run out of words. “If you are not satisfied with the servants who are assigned to you, you have every right to pay for whoever you wish to hire.”

* * * *

“And when he said ‘pay,’ why, the color drained right out of that woman’s face and I thought she would faint, I did.”

There was dead silence in the servants’ hall while everyone thought about the scene in the drawing room that the maid had just described to them.

They had each and every one of them been shocked when the duchess had returned from the dower house with the baby. Although they had hurried to send to the village for another wet nurse and had done their best to make the baby comfortable in the old nursery, they had each secretly thought it was a bad mistake.

“Child-stealing is what it is,” Mrs. Mackey had privately told Mrs. Kelso, who refused to admit it was anything of the sort.

Even though they did not agree that the duchess had acted correctly, it was tacitly agreed that they would stand behind her to the end, even should it cost them their jobs.

No one had been the least bit surprised when the dowager duchess had shown up in a rage. But this ...

“And she never mentioned the baby?” Mrs. Kelso expressed the question that was in all of their minds.

“Not one word. It would appear that she hasn’t even discovered the child is missing,” the maid replied, disgust in her voice.

Again there was silence, broken finally by a bitter laugh from Miss Hepden. “I’ll bet a month’s wages that she never does notice.”

There were no takers.

* * * *

He should get up and return to his own bed, Darius thought, but it was so comfortable lying beside his wife. Maybe it wouldn’t matter if he rested there just for a few more minutes? After all, some kind of explanation was due him for the Cheltenham tragedy that had been enacted for his benefit this afternoon.

“Elizabeth?”

“Mmmm?”

She responded by cuddling more closely against him, which had not been his intention.

“Would you care to explain why you stole Miss Hepden away from my cousin’s widow?”

He felt Elizabeth stiffen and pull away. At first, he thought she was angry at him for daring to question her authority in a household matter, but as soon as she spoke, she disabused him of that notion.

“She was striking her!”

“Who was striking whom?”

Now Elizabeth pushed herself up in bed, as if her emotions were too intense to allow her to relax. “Amelia has been hitting Miss Hepden. Twice she has struck her with her fist, once even giving her a black eye, and today she threw a heavy vase at her, which severely bruised her arm.”

He could feel the anger radiating out from his wife. “And yet you sent Maggie to work for such a person?”

To his surprise, there was laughter beside him. “Maggie told Amelia if she hits her—if Amelia hits Maggie, that is to say—then Maggie will hit her back. I believe that was the source of all the dramatics this afternoon, because actually Maggie is every bit as talented a lady’s maid as Miss Hepden, and Amelia can have no legitimate complaints on that score.”

“I was unaware that Maggie has pugilistic tendencies.”

There was another chuckle beside him, and Darius put his hands behind his head in order to resist the temptation to grab his wife and pull her down on top of him again.

“Actually, I don’t believe Maggie has ever hit anyone in her life, but she is very good at bluffing. Take my advice and don’t get involved in a poker game with her.”

Bluffing? Just a pretty word for deceit, and all women were good at that, especially his wife. He had been in the way of forgetting, but now he forced himself to remember her guilty look at the Wynchcombes’ ball and his own resolve not to have any contact with her other than fulfilling his duty to provide for the succession.

Without responding to her last remark, he rolled out of bed and headed for his own room. He made the mistake, however, of pausing in the doorway to look back at her.

In the dim light he could only make out her outline, but she looked so little and so forlorn, sitting there alone in that big bed, that he could not bring himself to leave her without a word.

“Good night,” he said, his voice more harsh than he had intended.

“Good night, my love,” came the soft reply.

His own bed seemed ridiculously large for one person, and it was a long time before he was able to sleep.

* * * *

His wife was either a saint or a masochist, Darius decided. He watched her move about the drawing room, speaking first to one guest and then to another. After a week of being bored out of his mind by the unbelievably fatuous remarks made by their assorted visitors, he himself had reached the point where anyone attempting to speak to him was rewarded with scowl.

So far no one appeared willing to risk being on the receiving end of a second scowl, so they were doing an admirable job of keeping their distance.

In another half hour or so, having done his nominal duty as host, he planned to sneak away and meet Dorie for a game of piquet, which she had finally managed to cajole him into teaching her to play.

On the other hand, he should not really have any complaints about the way the house party was going. Lady Letitia had chosen well, and the five bachelors were falling all over themselves to court Amelia.

Up to this point she had not favored any particular one of them, but was basking in their undivided attention. The other three eligible young ladies were a little miffed that Amelia was hogging all the men, but Elizabeth had managed thus far to soothe everyone’s ruffled sensibilities.

More important to Darius, Amelia no longer made the slightest effort to seek him out and flirt with him, and she had apparently given up her futile attempts to attract his attention.

“Beg pardon, your Grace.”

Darius looked up to see Kelso standing discreetly beside him.

“I regret very much to inform you that you have visitors.”

“At this time of the evening?”

“They identified themselves as your sisters.”

Darius cursed under his breath. Across the room Elizabeth looked up and her eyes met his, and for a long moment it seemed as if they could communicate without words. Then Lady Melford said something to his wife, and she turned away.

“I don’t suppose you were able to convince them no one was in residence? No, I don’t suppose you could.” Darius answered his own question. “My sisters may have their faults, but stupidity is not one of them.”

Reluctantly he rose to his feet and attempted to make an unobtrusive exit from the drawing room. Unfortunately, as soon as Kelso opened the door to the hallway, the babble of voices could easily be heard coming up from below.

“My sisters did not come alone?”

“No, your Grace.”

“I shudder to think who they may have brought with them.” Reaching the top of the stairs, Darius paused and surveyed the crowd assembled below. He spotted his sisters immediately and also recognized his brothers-in-law. He could not, however, identify the men whose arms his sisters were clinging to, nor the women who were draped all over his brothers-in-law, nor the assorted other “ladies” and “gentlemen” who accompanied them.

“Shall I warn Mrs. Kelso that additional rooms will need to be prepared, your Grace?”

“Don’t be a fool, Kelso. I have no intention of allowing any of these people to stay.”

“Ah, so they are impostors.”

“No, they are my sisters. But there is no love lost between us, and they have only come here on a lark, to aggravate me.”

Looking up, Lucy spotted him and began to wave her hand wildly and call out to him, and Darius realized his task would be complicated by the fact that they were all apparently quite tipsy.

With Kelso following and his newly arrived guests calling out cheerful greetings to him, Darius descended the stairs. He was debating whose neck to wring first, when Lucy and Cecily both threw their arms around his neck, in an obscene parody of sisterly love.

He was trying to pry them loose when Amelia called out from the top of the stairs. “Oh, Lucy, Cecily, what a wonderful surprise! Oh, I am so happy you are here. You must all come up at once and meet the others. Kelso, bring some more refreshments. I am sure our guests must be famished from their long journey.”

Before Darius could countermand her invitation, the crowd of interlopers swept past him and disappeared up the stairs. Only Lucy stayed behind long enough to pat him on the cheek. “So nice of you to have us, brother dear,” she said gloatingly. “And here Cecily was worried that you might not be happy to see us.” With a tinkling laugh, she hurried up the stairs after the others.

Beside him Kelso cleared his throat. “Would you be wanting me to speak to Mrs. Kelso?”

Knowing when to admit defeat, Darius nodded briefly. “Have the rooms prepared.”

Hearing a sound above him, he looked up to see his wife standing alone at the head of the stairs. Their eyes met, and again he had the impression that she understood everything he was thinking.

* * * *

“As near as I can sort it out, your sisters have brought their husbands, their lovers, their lovers’ wives, their husbands’ mistresses, their husbands’ mistresses’ husbands—”

“I don’t want to hear any of this, Munke.” Darius pulled on his boots and stood up.

“Aye, and you don’t want to hear how obnoxious your sisters are behaving, nor how badly they are treating your servants, nor how hard your wife is working to keep all the guests entertained. All you want to do is run away like a coward and pretend that estate business is keeping you too busy to spend any time with your guests.”

“That will be
enough, Munke. There is a lot of work involved in running an estate, and well you know it.”

“There is not so much work that you could not spend a few hours a day accompanying your guests on a ride or playing billiards with the men.”

“I prefer to ride now, at daybreak.”

“And your preference is all that matters, is that what you’re telling me? Have you ever asked what your wife prefers?”

“I do not wish to discuss my wife, not with you nor with anyone.”

“So, you are still determined to believe those ridiculous lies your sister wrote you,” Munke said with disgust.

“That and the evidence of my own eyes.”

“Bah, if I were to believe the evidence of my eyes, I would say you are in love with your wife and too stubborn to admit it.”

The anger Darius expected to feel at his valet’s comment did not come. Instead, he felt only a deep weariness.

* * * *

Rather than going straight to the stables, as was his wont, Darius stopped by the balustrade separating the upper gardens from the lower ones and watched the sun rise.

In spite of his protestations to Munke, he was beginning to feel guilty at the way he was dumping all the responsibility for the house party onto Elizabeth’s shoulders. And contrary to Munke’s opinion, Darius knew quite well what was going on in the main house, thanks to his little cousin-in-law.

Dorie spent most of her time in the servants’ hall, and he could not blame her for wanting to avoid the guests. The servants were using the opportunity to spoil her as outrageously as they had once spoiled him, but unfortunately being so much with them meant Dorie also heard all the gossip the servants were privy to. And there was very little that went on in Colthurst Hall that the servants were not fully aware of.

While not precisely repeating the gossip herself, Dorie still revealed a lot by the innocent questions she asked him—questions that would never have come to her mind, were it not for the actions of the lords and ladies presently ensconced in his own house.

Like a pack of rats, they were, destroying or contaminating everything they came into contact with, and he wished he could tell them all to ...

He cut off that thought. As much as it went against the grain, he had to tolerate their unwanted company for a while longer. Although the house party was no longer enjoying the harmony that had characterized it earlier, before the arrival of his sisters, he still had hopes of its ultimately succeeding in its purpose.

Realizing he was destroying the tranquility of the early-morning hours with such thoughts, he continued on to the stables, where, to his surprise, he found Billy holding three saddled horses instead of one.

It was not necessary to ask who the other two horses were for, since the boy, as usual, was ready to volunteer his thoughts on the subject.

“Which way was you planning to ride out this morning, yer Grace? Me and her Grace would kinda like ter ride east this mornin’, ifen it’s all the same with you. We’ve a mind to see how the berries are doing in the home woods.”

Against his will, Darius found himself quizzing the boy. “Do you ride out frequently with her Grace?”

“Nigh on every morning.” Billy gave a yawn that was much too big for his face. “Don’t know why you two can’t ride out together, so some folks ‘round here could sleep longer,” he grumbled.

Without answering, Darius took Bête Noire’s reins from the boy, then mounted and rode off, obediently turning his horse’s head to the south instead of to the east.

What were things coming to when even the lowest stable lad questioned the actions of a duke? With a smile Darius admitted to himself that he was never going to get the same unquestioning obedience at Colthurst Hall that he had received in his regiment. Too many of the servants remembered patching his knee when he fell, sneaking him cherry tarts when he was being disciplined, and praising him when he shot his first rabbit or caught a particularly fine fish.

Reaching the little hill south of the house, Darius reined in his mount and looked back. From there he was able to watch two riders heading east, going to check out the berries in the home woods.