The Duke's Downfall (7 page)

“Why no, Your Grace,” Betsy assured him, “it’s no bother at all to dance with you.

Charles came to an abrupt, stone-footed halt fortuitously near the doorway and out of the path of the other dancers. “I beg your pardon?”

Her eyes, brilliant as the diamonds at her throat, were the only color left in Betsy’s face. Swiftly, as if his touch burned, she withdrew from his arms.

“My grandmother would have my head if I slapped you,” she returned scathingly, “but someone should, Your Grace, for even thinking I would accompany you to the garden!”

“I said pardon!” Charles exclaimed indignantly, but to her back, for she’d already swept haughtily away from him. Aware that heads were turning in their direction, he hurried after her, caught her by the elbow, and spun her around in the doorway. “I said nothing about the garden! I said—”

“Unhand me,” Betsy said icily, “or I will scream.”

Charles did so, let her pass through the archway into the foyer beyond, then leapt after her and reclaimed her elbow. He also put his right foot firmly down on the hem of her gown—but remained angrily oblivious to it as he again pulled her around to face him.

“Now see here, young lady. Your ploys and poses will not work with me. I am not a green boy to be led about—”

“Oh, bother!” With her free hand, Betsy plucked the lamb’s wool from her ears. “Now that I can hear, kindly deliver your setdown and leave me in peace!”

How perfectly brilliant, Charles thought, totally forgetting Teddy in his amazement and admiration of her ingenuity. What a simply clever defense against permanent ear damage. “Tell me, my lady,” he said eagerly. “Were you able to hear anything I said?”

“No,” Betsy confirmed distastefully. “Not clearly, at any rate—for which I shall be eternally grateful.”

Then she hadn’t been laughing at him, Charles realized, taking in her overbright eyes and defiantly lifted chin. He further supposed that with her ears stuffed with wool, she could very easily have mistaken pardon for garden. How utterly famous, he marveled, struck by the irony and yet pleased beyond reason that she’d meant to slap him. So very pleased that he laughed.

So suddenly and so heartily that mirthful tears sprang in his eyes. And in Betsy’s, too, though she felt anything but merry. She felt murderous. And mortified to be laughed at by a duke, no matter how dotty he pretended to be. He wasn’t, of course—at least, she hadn’t thought so—but the abrupt change in his demeanor was beginning to make her wonder. Ripping into her one moment, howling with glee the next, and now, to Betsy’s utter astonishment, breaking off to purse his lips and tap one finger against his chin.

“A denser substance would have served you better,” he said thoughtfully. “Something moldable that could be easily shaped to fit the ear. May I suggest candlewax? I believe it would be just the thing.”

“So would throttling you!” Betsy declared, lifting her skirts to wheel away from him, unaware until she’d taken a step and felt the
r-i-i-p
at her waist that the deeply ruffled flounce of ice-blue satin that made the hem of her gown was trapped beneath the Duke of Braxton’s foot.

She froze, horrified, feeling a chill race up the backs of her legs to take the place of the satin panel billowing away from her. Betsy felt it float past her knees, felt the color drain from her face, saw her reputation and her future being torn to shreds along with her gown.

Charles saw the same picture, his own clumsy part in it, and but one way to save her. Of the snowy petticoat her grandmother had insisted she wear to ward off the chill night air, he had only a glimpse as he snatched up the fluttering panel, looped his left arm around her waist, pulled her against him, and felt her go rigid with shock and insult.

“Let me go!” she cried, aghast.

“Would you prefer the world and all his wife to see your petticoat?” Charles retorted, glancing swiftly about. The foyer was mercifully empty, and the avid audience they’d had near the ballroom doorway had returned their attention to the dancers.

“I would prefer you release me,” Betsy shot contemptuously over her shoulder, “before you shred my reputation along with my gown!”

“Then stop behaving like a widgeon and allow me to assist you,” Charles replied pragmatically. “Walk quickly to the door and you may yet save your virtue.”

Despite her fury and embarrassment, Betsy had sense enough to realize it was the only logical course. Steeling herself against the duke’s scandalous embrace, she moved swiftly forward. So abruptly that Charles was hard put to keep pace with her, keep the torn panel between them with a hand at the small of her back and his arm about her waist.

Since Lady Pinchon’s great age had forced her to move the ballroom to the ground floor, they had scarce thirty feet to cover to reach the entrance, the darkness beyond, and safety. A paunchy footman in powdered wig and livery merely bowed at their shocking in-tandem approach and opened the door.

As they swept past, Charles commanded him to summon the dowager countess. To the footman stationed between potted topiaries in the chilly, torch-lit dark beneath the portico, he said, in the voice that had moved Teddy to prayer, “The Clymore carriage, this moment.”

The servant bowed hastily and scurried away. Catching the torn panel between his teeth, Charles removed his jacket. Studiously keeping his gaze locked on the back of Lady Elizabeth’s golden head, he eased it about her waist.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” she said tightly, as she took the sleeves from him and tied them into a firm knot.

“You see, my lady? All’s well that ends well.” Charles held the panel of her skirt between his outstretched hands and wryly arched an eyebrow. “With the exception, I fear, of your gown.

His lofty, bemused tone was too much. Overcome by embarrassment, anger, and her rash Keaton temperament, Betsy rounded on the Duke of Braxton like a flash of lightning and began thrashing him with the fan draped over her wrist by its thin gold cord.

Taken by surprise, Charles flung up his arms to fend her off. The sight of her skirt panel still stretched between his hands drew a shriek from Betsy and a fresh volley of blows, most of which landed harmlessly on the length of pale satin. When she’d exhausted her strength and her breath, Charles lowered his shield and looked at her.

She glared back at him, her bosom heaving, her furious gaze burning more intently than the torchlight flickering on her flushed cheeks. Her coiffure was a tangled mass of curls gleaming like spun gold in the smoky glow.

“Keep away from me.” Pointing her battered fan like a pistol, Betsy backed away from him. “You are a mad, rag-mannered menace!”

“Your servant.” Charles bowed, neither surprised nor unpleased to note that His Dottiness’s fame had preceded him. “I would be delighted to give my lady a wide berth.” He folded her skirt panel and offered it to her. When she reached for it, he snatched it out of her grasp. “In exchange for a small favor.”

“Name it.”

“You have my word that I will ignore your very existence if you will agree to cut my brother Teddy from your circle of suitors.” Charles offered the panel again and was surprised to see her hesitate.

“It was brother you said, not bother, wasn’t it?” she asked, a wary, almost wounded tone in her voice.

“Indeed it was. Do we have an agreement?”

Betsy could scarce believe he was serious. “What on earth makes you think I would consider Teddy an eligible parti?”

“It has been my experience,” Charles replied curtly, “that any male in long pants is considered fair game during the Season.”

“And you think me on the hunt, Your Grace?” Betsy inquired icily.

“Do you deny it?”

“Most vehemently!”

“As did Teddy. But I am not an impetuous boy who is so easily convinced.”

“Indeed you are not, Your Grace! You are an arrogant, insufferable—” Betsy began furiously, but was cut short by the sudden opening of the door.

Light from the chandeliers and her harried-looking grandmother tumbled onto the steps of Lady Pinchon’s house. “God’s teeth!” the dowager squawked, her startled gaze leaping from Charles to Betsy and back again. “What’s happened now?”

“Nothing serious, Lady Clymore,” Charles assured her. “As the seam of my coat failed me in Oxford Street, so the stitches in Lady Elizabeth’s gown have failed her.”

“Them dem Frenchie modistes!” The dowager exclaimed, blustering her way to Betsy’s side. “It’s their revenge for Boney, I swear it is!”

The clatter of hooves announcing the arrival of the Clymore carriage drew Charles’s attention from her ladyship’s clucking and fussing to the splendid grays drawing the shiny barouche to a halt beneath the portico. The coachman, an unlit pipe clamped in his teeth, cast a baleful eye on Charles as a broad-limbed footman swung down from the rear to open the door and place the steps.

“George!” Lady Clymore commanded. “Fetch our wraps!”

“Yes, m’lady,” the footman replied, shooting Charles a less than respectful glance as he passed him on the steps.

These servants are as brazen as their mistress, Charles marveled, noting that the coachman had wrapped one hand in readiness about his whip. He noticed, too, that Lady Elizabeth, her nose in the air and pointedly ignoring him, was gathering what was left of her skirts and preparing to mount the carriage steps behind her grandmother.

“Not so fast, my lady.” Charles moved quickly to intercept her. “I would have your answer.”

He offered his arm to assist her as was polite, but Lady Elizabeth refused it. Instead, she faced him with a defiantly lifted chin and a barely civil curtsey.

“I am flattered, Your Grace, that you think me such a threat,” she said in a scathing tone. “And my answer is that both you and your brother can go to the devil!”

Then she snatched her skirt panel away from him, stomped up the steps into the carriage, and slammed the door in his face.

Chapter Seven

"Why was I born female?” Betsy fumed for at least the hundredth time since breakfast, as she paced the apple green and cherry pink morning room. “If I were a man I could have called him out for such an insult!”

On the rug by the hearth, where a fire burned against the autumn chill, Boru raised his head hopefully and thumped his tail as his mistress stalked past him. That, too, for at least the hundredth time.

“No gentleman,” Lady Clymore replied, without looking up from her embroidery, “would credit such a challenge.”

“And why not?” Betsy demanded, halting near the windows to glare at her grandmother. The sun had nearly melted the rime of frost from the glass and shot her golden hair with silver highlights.

“If you were a man,” the countess replied, peering over the spectacles she wore to ease the strain of needlework, “would you be able to keep a sober face if summoned to the field of honor by a young hothead named Elizabeth?”

“If I were a man,” Betsy returned, her hands thrust on her hips, “I would not be Elizabeth. I would be Edward after Father and Grandfather.”

“And well on your way to rack and ruin,” Lady Clymore retorted, then added lightly, hoping to jolly Betsy out of her foul temper, “And you would look monstrous silly in green-sprigged muslin.”

“This is not a subject for jest, Granmama. That odious man insulted me!”

“That odious man is a duke I will remind you for the last time. And he did no more than state the truth. You have in fact come to town to find a husband.”

“Because I am female!” Betsy declared, throwing her arms wide. “Do you not see the injustice?”

“I see it, but am powerless to change it.” Lady Clymore laid her embroidery aside, removed her spectacles, and saw that Betsy in her beseeching, sunlit pose looked like a grievously maligned and very angry angel. “I also see by the clock that it is nearly time for morning calls, and advise you to come down from the boughs lest you give the gentlemen whose bouquets fill the Blue Saloon a disgust of you.”

“And that is another thing!” Betsy snatched up a handful of cards and notes that had come with the floral tributes. “I haven’t the dimmest notion who any of these gentlemen are! How am I to find a companionable husband among my dancing partners when I am passed from one to the other in such a whirl that I scarce remember my name, let alone theirs?”

“That is the whole idea, you silly gel.” Her ladyship tugged exasperatedly at the silk paisley shawl laid over her shoulders as she sprang to her feet from a velvet settee. “If given sufficient opportunity to think about it and become acquainted, no young person of any sense—either male or female— would ever marry anyone and the population would suffer a serious decline!”

“A splendid notion!” Betsy tossed the cards in the air, folded her arms, and glared at her grandmother. “It will save the world from future tyrants such as the Duke of Braxton!”

Like leaves tossed on a feckless wind, the notes penned on the finest velum skittered toward the floor, stirring Boru from his rug with a yap of excitement. He snapped one out of the air, thoroughly mangling it in his great jaws before bringing it to Betsy and plopping it, wet with drool and crumpled beyond redemption, at her feet.

The dowager fell back on the settee with a groan and a hand over her eyes, but at last, Betsy laughed. Dropping to one knee, she put her arms around Boru and hugged his warm, shaggy neck. He whined and banged his tail happily against one leg of a small table.

The hand-painted china shepherdess and her flock placed there trembled and tottered precariously toward the edge. The delicate figurines were a particular favorite of her ladyship, and one of the few items the staff had missed on their sweep of the house before her arrival with Betsy and the “beast,” as Boru was called by the servants.

If Iddings had not, at that moment, appeared in the doorway with Charles’s coat wrapped in tissue and folded in a box, Little Bo-Peep and her sheep would have fallen victim to the Irish wolf. The quick-witted butler scarce had time to toss the package into a chair, lift the hem of his green baize apron, and slide onto his knees to catch them as they toppled off the edge.

At the thump on the carpet beside her, Betsy drew away from Boru, saw Iddings with a relieved expression on his face and her grandmother’s cherished china flock in his apron. Quickly she snatched them up and dashed them to safety on the mantle. Boru followed her, while Iddings gingerly pinched the ruined note off the floor and disposed of it in the fire.