Duchess in Love (35 page)

“The coach…” She stumbled to a halt.

“You will follow your husband's coach. I expect that Lady Troubridge has already ordered it hung with black. Do you have a black gown?”

Esme didn't answer.

“I will accompany you, if you wish.”

“That would be kind of you,” she said dully. She walked across the hall into the empty room. Her foot kicked something as she walked forward. “The Aphrodite.” She picked it up. “It's fallen into pieces. It must have cracked when I threw it down. I broke this too. I'm sorry. I broke the Aphrodite. It's ruined. I ruin everything I touch.”

“Hush,” Gina said. “It's simply hinged, that's all. I meant to ask you for it. I must give my brother whatever is inside.”

“Your brother!”

Gina met the startled eyes of her two friends. “Mr. Wapping,” she said with an unsteady smile. She took the Aphrodite from Esme's hands. “Didn't I tell you that Mr. Wapping is yet another child of Countess Ligny?”

“Mr. Wapping is your
brother
?” Esme asked.

Gina pulled a roll of paper from the hollowed center of the Aphrodite. “He's my half brother, actually. There's only paper here,” she said. “Just paper. No jewels.”

“Mr. Wapping?” Helene repeated, stunned. “Your tutor? Did he give you that statue?”

“No, the statue is a bequest from Countess Ligny,” Gina said as she undid the ribbon holding the roll of paper. “Why, why, how very peculiar!”

They both looked a question.

“It's my letters. The letters I wrote her. Here's the first one, and the second. The last letter I wrote before she died. Why did the countess send back my letters?”

“Is there a message from her?”

Gina shook her head, looking through the little sheaf of papers once more.

“Perhaps she forgot the letters were inside,” Helene suggested.

“Mr. Wapping will be disappointed,” Gina said. “He was hoping for emeralds.”

“How on earth did your tutor—your brother—know about the Aphrodite?” Helene asked.

“The countess told him that the Aphrodite held her most precious possession,” Gina answered, cutting herself short with a little gasp.

A smile crossed Esme's face. “Her most precious possession,” she said softly, reaching out and touching the letters. “That's lovely.”

Gina bit her lip. “She can't have meant it.”

“She did,” Helene stated.

“Then why didn't she write to me herself?”

“Who knows?” Esme said. “But your letters were the most precious thing she owned.” Her eyes filled with tears again.

“I never thought.” Gina fit the Aphrodite back together and looked at it. “I thought she sent me a naked statue because she believed I was a strumpet like—”

“She sent you the statue because it was beautiful and she wanted you to know that your letters were precious,” Esme said.

Gina's mouth wobbled. “I thought she was just like Cam.”

“What about Cam?” Helene asked.

“He sent me a naked statue too. When I turned twenty-one, he sent me a naked Cupid. At first I was grateful, but then I felt angry. It was so unlike me.”

“I expect the Cupid is very beautiful, isn't it?” Esme put in. “The Aphrodite certainly is.”

They all looked at the Aphrodite. Gina's fingers had been clenched around her middle. Now she uncurled her hand and propped the goddess up with her other hand.

“She is beautiful, isn't she?”

The Aphrodite stood with her arm thrown over her head, looking backward in fear, in shame, in sorrow, or with love.

Each woman saw something different in her face.

“I
s my wife below?”

Gina's maid was packing a trunk. She looked up. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace?”

“I am looking for my wife. Your mistress, the duchess.”

Annie gaped, and then said, “No, she has gone to the village with—with her—”

“With whom?”

“With her husband!” the little maid blurted out.

Cam froze in the bedchamber door. His voice was as smooth as honey and fifty times more barbed. “Am I to understand that my—that your mistress married Marquess Bonnington?”

“They married by special license, sir,” Annie said a bit shrilly. This was the most thrilling thing that had happened to her in weeks.

“He put me in mind of a viper,” she confided later to the assembled upper servants. “A viper! My mistress is better off without him, great hulking Greek that he is.”

“The Duke of Girton isn't Greek. He just lives there,” said an upper housemaid. And she added, showing that she was an avid reader of the gossip columns, “His mother was one of Lord Fairley's daughters.”

“Living in Greece is good enough, isn't it? A murderous lot, foreigners. Why, the duke looked as if he'd murder me, just for telling him that my mistress married another man. Everyone knew his marriage was annulled. So why was he so surprised? Why, I've know this fortnight.”

“Fortnight? They have been married a
fortnight
?” the housemaid gasped.

“Not married, but engaged at least that long,” Annie said, nodding at the circle of faces around the butler's table. She was hugely enjoying her newfound power as the personal maid to the notorious Duchess of Girton, now the notorious Marchioness Bonnington. Previously, she had hardly been noticed by Lady Troubridge's sniffy butler, and here she was, seated to the right of the butler himself.

“The duke has a right to look murderous,” the housekeeper, Mrs. Massey, put in. “Lady Bonnington
was
his wife, after all. Common decency should have made her tell him that she was remarrying.”

“I think he didn't want to end the marriage,” Annie said.

“Well, his valet is packing his things as we speak,” the butler remarked. “I gather that the duke is returning to Greece immediately. I've set the outdoor men to taking down that stage, what with the duke gone and Lady Rawlings in mourning.”

In fact, Cam was watching Phillipos throw the last of his belongings into a trunk.

“What shall I do with these papers, sir? You know charcoal doesn't travel well.” Phillipos held up sketches of Gina.

Cam methodically tore the paper into small pieces without comment.

“And the marble?” Phillipos nodded toward the untouched block in the corner.

“Convey our regrets to the butler for the inconvenience, and ask him to dispose of it as Lady Troubridge wishes.”

The valet placed a last neck cloth in a small valise.

Cam looked cursorily about the chamber. “The sooner we're in Dover and preparing to sail, the better. I shall say a brief farewell to Lady Troubridge and beg the use of one of her carriages.”

“What of Mr. Rounton?” Phillipos asked.

The duke didn't seem to hear him. He was staring at a fragment of paper in his hand, a sketch of the duchess's hand.

Phillipos cleared his throat. “Mr. Rounton is waiting for you in the library, my lord.”

“Oh yes,” Cam said absently. He thrust the paper into his pocket and walked out the door without another word.

In the library, Rounton was pacing the floor and giving himself a silent lecture. Girtons were trouble. Look at the illegalities in which the old duke involved himself. The new Girton was as much trouble as the old.

Of course, the duke was right to say that he had stepped out of bounds. But devil take it, he had only instructed that ass Finkbottle to nudge events in the proper direction. Not to overturn the whole apple cart. Devil take it, you couldn't trust anyone these days.

He pressed the heel of his hand hard to the burning spot in his stomach. Perhaps he should take the doctor's advice. Take a trip, the doctor had said. Go to a warm country. And now Girton wanted him to go to Greece and close up his house. It was almost providential. Rounton twiddled with his pocket watch. Given young Finkbottle's skills, he would have no clients when he returned home. Which might be all to the best.

He swung about as the door opened. “Your Grace,” he acknowledged, bowing. “I am prepared—”

But Girton cut him off. “I am catching the first available boat from Dover to Greece. I'm fear your little scheme has
failed. Apparently the duchess married Bonnington yesterday by special license.”

Rounton was struck dumb with surprise.

“She must have rushed to the altar after I left the house,” Girton went on.

“Impossible! Marquess Bonnington married in such a harum-scarum fashion?”

“Lady Troubridge just confirmed it. Apparently the marquess blundered into another guest's room in the middle of the night, trying to find his new wife's chamber. Caused a death with his marital enthusiasm.”

“What?”

“He tussled with Miles Rawlings in the dark, and Rawlings had an attack of some sort,” Girton said impatiently. “I am told that the wedded couple has taken a short drive to the village. I trust that you can convey my farewell and congratulations, Rounton.”

The solicitor pursed his lips. There was something fishy here. “I find it difficult to believe that Her Grace would make such a rash decision,” he said, a vision of the eminently practical duchess flitting through his mind.

“There's nothing rash about it,” the duke snapped. “She has been engaged to the man for months.”

“I am disappointed,” Rounton remarked. “I won't deny it.”

There was a heartbeat's silence in the room. “Not as much as I am,” Girton admitted, a rueful twist in his voice. For the first time, solicitor and duke looked at each other as man to man rather than employer to client. But Rounton looked away. It wasn't proper, what he saw in Girton's eyes.

“I'd like you to contact Thomas Bradfellow of Christ Church. Endow a chair in Italian studies and make him put Wapping in it.” The duke walked to the door. “Settle the estate on Stephen as soon as possible,” he added.

“Yes, my lord,” Rounton murmured. He was hardly in a position to offer advice.

The wide vestibule outside the library was crowded with gentlefolk alternately shrieking at the misuse of their luggage and kissing one another goodbye with shrill enthusiasm. Lady Troubridge's house party had, perhaps, been slightly shorter than it was wont to be, but it had been even more thrilling than anyone expected.

Cam was making his way toward the door when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to find Tuppy Perwinkle just behind him.

“Good afternoon,” Cam said, bowing. “I'm afraid that I'm returning to Greece immediately. Otherwise I would be—”

“My wife,” Tuppy interrupted, “says that the duchess loves
you
.”

Cam's stomach instinctively clenched. “I fail to see why you have chosen to share your wife's musings on the subject with me.”

Tuppy frowned at him. “I wrote my wife off as a lost cause. I didn't want you to make the same mistake.”

“Given that my
former
wife remarried yesterday, I believe the matter is out of my hands,” Cam replied icily. “Now, if you will excuse me.” He jerked his head at Phillipos, standing in the corner of the vestibule with his luggage, and bid a firm farewell to Lord Perwinkle.

The trip to the coast was uneventful, if slow. Several days later, Cam gripped the rail of a sweet little sailing ship called
The Molly
and tried to force himself to look away from the dock. It was absurd to think that this cloud of dust, or that carriage, might disguise his errant wife—no, Bonnington's wife now. Worse than absurd to think that his wife might have followed him, might have changed her mind. It was imbecilic to hope that this was a black dream, and he would
wake to find himself being accused of snoring in her ear, and groping her body in his sleep.

And yet he couldn't stop hoping. A large carriage drew up that might hold a duchess. Straining his eyes, he saw a fat parson lumber out of a carriage and haul out an even larger woman. Even from this distance, he could hear the woman shrieking, calling the parson an oaf and a nincompoop.

Gina had made her choice—and chosen well. Bonnington was a good man, a solid man, besides being infernally handsome. Moreover, he lived in England. So Bonnington looked at Esme Rawlings the way a starving dog eyes a bone? He would be discreet. Presumably he wouldn't set up his wife's closest friend as a mistress.

I wouldn't have been respectable, Cam thought. At times during the trip to the shore, he had tried to picture himself living in the English countryside, building flat bridges and supervising harvest dinners. His thoughts always ended with an image of himself hoisting his wife onto a plank table amidst the marrows and beans and—

He wrenched his mind away again and went down into his cabin. Three passengers, the captain had said. It didn't take a genius to realize that he was about to spend two to three months in close proximity with a hymn singer and his bad-tempered shrew of a wife. He refused to watch the fat parson board the ship. It might look as if he were waiting for someone.

Phillipos looked into the cabin around an hour after the ship had set sail. “The captain reports that we are clear of the shore, sir. He would like the passengers to join him for sherry.”

Cam looked up with a frown. He had just recovered from a fit of the sulks, as he'd taken to labeling his black moods, and he was making rapid sketches in charcoal, rather jagged but not terrible. He knew from experience that it took sev
eral hours before he gained complete hand control while on board ship.

“Goodness' sakes,” Phillipos said with relish. He had picked up several English idioms and meant to use them regularly. “That's a stern-looking woman.”

“Medusa,” Cam said briefly, putting the snake-haired goddess to the side and washing his hands in the basin. “Do you suppose I have to dress for dinner?”

“Undoubtedly, my lord. Captain Brackit appears to be a rather formal man. His valet told me that he has a boy whose sole work is starching the captain's clothing.”

Cam responded with a grunt as he stripped off his comfortable cambric shirt and began to wash. Ten minutes later, Phillipos wrestled his gloomy master into a black coat and declared himself satisfied.

Cam walked into the captain's cabin in a mood of savage despair. Intellectually, he knew it would pass. He would find peace in the heady pleasure of shaping marble.

Someday he would find another woman, and push his onetime wife to the back of his mind. Someday he wouldn't mind the fact that he would never again read a letter from Gina, never again hold—

Someday.

He shoved open the captain's door and slammed it straight into the back of the plump parson.

“I beg pardon, sir,” Cam exclaimed, stooping to lend the man a hand. The parson had gone heavily down on his knees. Bracing his legs, Cam hauled him to his feet.

“That's all right, Your Grace,” the parson said, beaming at Cam with the delight of a plain Englishman who has just discovered that he's in close quarters with aristocracy. “I was just telling your lovely wife that…”

The parson kept talking but his voice faded from Cam's mind.

She was smiling at him as if nothing had happened. As if he hadn't fled helter-skelter across the countryside, running like a coward from the knowledge of her wedding. As if she hadn't married the better man.

“Ah,” Cam said, cutting into the parson's conversation. He bowed and raised her hand to his lips. “My last duchess.”

“And your next,” she replied.

She was exquisitely dressed and groomed, from her darkened eyelashes to her curled hair. Every inch of her was duchesslike.

He could only grin.

She turned to the parson and tapped him lightly on the arm. “You see the duke struck dumb with surprise, Parson Quibble.”

“My sister was the same at parting,” Quibble said promptly. “Cried as if I were going to the Antipodes. Are you making a long visit to Greece, Your Grace?”

Gina looked pensively over her glass of sherry. “The duke sculpts marble in the islands,” she said to the parson. “We shall likely live there for several years, at least.”

Cam drank weak sherry and tried to contain the singing joy in his body. Apparently, she was still his wife, every practical, managing inch of her. Or she would be his wife again, to be exact.

“A sacrifice indeed!” Parson Quibble said with a shudder.

“For a delicate lady such as yourself, the islands are a dreadful place. The mainland is bad enough.” He tossed back his sherry. “My dear sister has asked a hundred times if she's asked once whether she might come live with me and soothe my travail. I have had to be firm. The harsh life is not for a rosebud such as you, I tell her. She would likely wilt in the fearsome heat, but even worse, she would be offended to the bone by the natives. Ali Pasha has no refinement, no manners, no culture. The court at Tepeleni has not even one ballroom!”

The duchess looked precisely as Quibble thought a duchess should look: exquisite and expensive. She would certainly wilt in the heat. No island could be home to an English lady. Several years indeed! He'd warrant that the duke would accompany his wife back to England in a week or so.

He erred by a matter of months.