The Duke's Men [1] What the Duke Desires (11 page)

“I only met her brother once, in Paris. I assumed
that’s where they lived. She doesn’t like to talk about her life in France much.”
As he saw Lisette approaching, he began, “No need to bother her about it. I don’t
like to—”

“Where is it you and your brother lived in France, Mrs. Kale?” Mrs. Greasley asked
as Lisette reached the coach. “I remember your telling me, but I forgot where it was
exactly.”

Gritting his teeth, Maximilian leaped out to help Lisette board. She shot him a veiled
glance as she climbed in and settled onto the seat. “He lives in a villa, of course.
A very nice one on a river.”

Maximilian got in. “Yes, but in what city?” he persisted. In for a penny, in for a
pound, and now that it was out in the open, he could use the Greasleys to learn what
he wanted to know. They would think it odd if she refused to answer such a simple
question. “Greasley said Rouen and Mrs. Greasley said Toulon, while I assumed it was
Paris. That’s where you and I met, after all.”

He watched for a telltale reaction to any of those choices but got only a stony stare.
Then her expression virtually crumbled right before his eyes.

As the coach swung into motion, she began to cry. “I can’t believe that you don’t
remember the first place we met. It wasn’t Paris at all, as you ought to know. Yes,
we danced in Paris, but that’s not where we met.”

To his horror, tears—real tears, for God’s sake—began sliding down her cheeks. She
dug inside her cloak for her handkerchief, her shoulders heaving with
distress. “How could you forget such a thing? I remember every minute of that day!”

Holy God. He could only gape at her, wondering where this pitiful creature had come
from.

“You’ve b-broken my h-heart,” she blubbered, very convincingly. “Y-you don’t c-care
about me at all, d-do you? M-my brother was right. I sh-should never have m-married
you!”

What the blazes? She really seemed upset. How could that be? Was he supposed to do
something about this?

“Now you’ve gone and done it, man,” Greasley mumbled. “Even if you don’t remember
some things, you got to pretend to remember. The ladies put great store on a man’s
memory of the important things.”

Mrs. Greasley glared at him. “We certainly do, and rightfully so. Are you saying that
you
pretend
to remember things about me? What have you been pretending, Mr. Greasley? Have you
forgotten where
we
met?”

“No, no, of course not, my angel!” he protested, shooting Maximilian a daggered glance.
“I wasn’t speaking of you and me, mind. I’m no young fool like Mr. Kale there. I remember
everything. We met at the assembly at Middleton Hall, we did.”

Pure outrage lit Mrs. Greasley’s face. “We did no such thing! We met at your cousin’s
dinner!”

The look of a cornered fox swept Greasley’s face. “I-I don’t think so,” he said uncertainly.
“That came later. Didn’t it?”

“It did not!” his wife said, then dissolved into tears herself. “L-leave it to a m-man
to forget the most
important things in a woman’s life. Do I m-mean so little to you? All the years that
we’ve sh-shared, did they mean s-so little?”

“No, my angel, no!” Greasley said, flashing Maximilian a panicky look.

Bloody hell. As if Maximilian could do anything about it. Lisette was rivaling Mrs.
Greasley for feminine distress beside him. How the blazes had it come to this? Women
were not supposed to cry over such things. Were they?

Even though he
knew
it was just her pretense, it was beginning to upset him. It smacked too much of the
strange fits of tears that had often followed the demented accusations Father had
flung at poor Mother, tears that had always kept Maximilian off balance.

He didn’t like being off balance. And how could Lisette really be crying, anyway?

My mother was an actress, you know.

Confound the woman. He should have given that statement more credence. Clearly she
had mastered the finer points of acting.

With her little ploy, the minx had effectively backed him into a corner, and there
wasn’t a confounded thing he could do about it without alerting the Greasleys to their
masquerade.

He was half tempted to do so. She wasn’t playing fair and deserved to suffer the consequences.
He could certainly make her do so. After all, she’d said she didn’t care if people
thought the worst of her. She’d even offered to masquerade as his mistress.

Yet she’d backed away from the door to keep her neighbors from seeing her in her night
rail. And blushed as she did so.

Despite all her bold assertions, she wasn’t as immune to public opinion as she pretended.
And the gentleman in him couldn’t let her be shamed in front of the Greasleys.

As Greasley continued to profess his great affection for Mrs. Greasley, Maximilian
bent to whisper in Lisette’s ear, “Very well, you win. For now. You can stop the tears.
I won’t ask them any more questions about your brother.”

With one last sniffle, she dabbed at her eyes, which really were red, and flashed
him the smallest smile of triumph he’d ever seen.

Then it vanished, and she stared up at him with a teary-eyed glance that would do
her actress mother proud. “Oh, my dearest Max, that is the sweetest apology. I forgive
you.”

As he fought to suppress a snort, she tucked her hand about his arm, then laid her
head against his shoulder. “And now I confess I’m very tired. I believe I shall sleep
a bit.”

The woman then actually proceeded to sleep. Or feign sleep. He wasn’t sure which.
But as Greasley managed to assuage his wife’s temper, and intimate whispers became
the only sounds in the carriage, Maximilian realized he had vastly underestimated
Miss Bonnaud’s determination to protect her brother.

Not to mention her ability to pull the wool over people’s eyes.

His eyes narrowed. She was indeed a more talented actress than he’d given her credit
for. Had he been too hasty in assuming she wasn’t in league with Bonnaud? Could she
be part of the man’s fraudulent scheme?

No, the servant he’d sent to Bow Street earlier would surely have uncovered some connection
between her and her brother. Though she’d managed
this
contretemps well, she’d been flummoxed at the Golden Cross when confronted by Mrs.
Greasley. And there was no way she or Bonnaud could have anticipated that he would
show up at Manton’s this morning.

Something she’d said earlier leapt into his mind.
I could
be
one of Dom’s men.

Ah, yes. She was feeling her oats, trying out her prowess at pretense. And doing it
rather effectively.

Well, she’d got the best of him this time, but it wouldn’t happen again, not if he
could help it. He didn’t like being made a fool of, and he damned well didn’t like
not being sure what she was up to.

From now on, there would need to be an understanding between them. She could pull
her tricks on anyone else they needed to fool. But she wasn’t going to pull them on
him. There would be truth between
them
at least.

A smile crept over his face. And he had a way to ensure that, too. Miss Bonnaud was
about to find out that two could play her game.

L
ISETTE HAD SERIOUS
trouble feigning sleep once Mrs. Greasley started talking again.

“Forgive me, Mr. Kale,” she asked, “but what does a land agent do, exactly?”

Holding her breath, Lisette waited to see how the duke would manage this. He’d been
stubborn about taking up
her
choice of profession, and now she couldn’t even help him with his choice without
giving up her pretense of sleep.

“He collects the rents,” Lyons answered handily, to her surprise. “He makes inventories.
He surveys the farms, keeps a terrier of the common lands . . .”

As he continued to list an impressive number of duties, Lisette marveled at his knowledge.
She could not have helped him with this, to be sure. Papa had always just said that
his land agent “managed the estate,” indifferent to what the man actually did. And
Papa had only been a viscount. She’d assumed that a wealthy duke with vast properties
would have even less need of
such knowledge and would know little about the inner workings of his estates.

In Lyons’s case, she’d been wrong. Mr. Greasley asked more questions, and the duke
answered every one easily. Astonishing.

As the two men began to talk of leases and enclosures and things that were far beyond
her ken, the rumble of Lyons’s voice and the swaying of the carriage began to lull
her into a doze. She
had
been up very late and had risen very early. And they wouldn’t reach Brighton for
some time . . .

She came slowly awake a while later to find the coach dark and the duke’s arm about
her shoulders. Her head had slid down to the center of his chest, and her hand was
on his waist.

Horrified, she jerked herself upright, embarrassment filling her cheeks with heat
as he pulled his arm from around her shoulders. “Where are we?” she asked, trying
to get her bearings.

“On the outskirts of Brighton,” he said in that low timbre that did something unseemly
to her insides.

She couldn’t look at him. She’d been practically on his lap! How mortifying. He must
think her the most vulgar creature imaginable.

“You were sleeping very sound,” Mrs. Greasley offered. “You must have been tired,
dearie.”

It was said so kindly that Lisette winced. She felt a little guilty about how her
fake tiff with her “husband” had led to a very real tiff between Mr. and Mrs. Greasley.
Still, they seemed to have patched it up. The woman
was leaning companionably against him, and he didn’t seem to mind.

Lisette turned her face to the window. Thank God this nightmare stretch of the trip
was almost over. The incident with the Greasleys had proved only too well that she
couldn’t necessarily travel with impunity.

The duke had known it, too, and tried to take advantage. She couldn’t fool herself
that she’d gained the upper hand with her little performance. She’d just gained a
reprieve, that’s all. He could have chosen to drop the facade the moment he realized
he might get the truth out of the Greasleys. He could have revealed that she was
not
married to him and asked them flat out what he wished to know. And in one fell swoop,
he would have ruined her and possibly Dom’s business.

Why hadn’t he? Because he was a gentleman?

More likely it was because he could tell that the Greasleys didn’t know enough to
help him. Thank God she’d mentioned both Toulon and Paris to them in the past, and
thank God the two cities were in very different parts of France. Otherwise, she was
almost certain Lofty Lyons would have abandoned her in Brighton to hunt down Tristan
in whichever one they’d named definitively.

She’d made a narrow escape. Too narrow.

Fortunately, she had little chance of encountering more neighbors. So once they parted
from the Greasleys she ought to be safe from discovery, at least until they were on
their way to Paris.

Surely Lyons would never abandon her in France.
That would be most ungentlemanly, and he was nothing if not a gentleman.

Most of the time.

A shiver skittered down her spine as she remembered the feel of his strong arm about
her shoulders. And worse yet, the way his hand had toyed with hers earlier. She should
have tugged hers free. Why hadn’t she?

Because it had been so . . . intimate. No man had ever held her hand in such a fashion,
boldly but tenderly, too. It had utterly unnerved her. Even now, with her hand still
tucked in the crook of his arm and his thigh pressed against hers, she felt that same
quivering in her belly that she’d felt when he’d caressed her hand.

She stiffened. Skrimshaw was right. She’d better take care. The duke had been the
one to assert he was her husband, and that shifted everything. Now there was no reason
for him to treat her like a sister, no reason for them to have separate rooms . . .
anywhere.

Her pulse gave a flutter at the thought of spending several nights on the road alone
in an inn room with him.

Lord save her. She’d better be careful.

She slanted a gaze up at him. He was looking entirely too unreadable. After her little
display, she’d expected him to be a good deal angrier. But he’d conceded defeat and
acted as if nothing had happened. It had put her on her guard again. He had something
up his sleeve. What could it be?

They reached the coaching inn a short while later. As the Greasleys took their leave,
Mrs. Greasley surprised her by murmuring, “Don’t let the man bully you, dearie.
If you don’t stand up for yourself at the beginning of the marriage, he’ll be no good
to you for anything but grief.”

The sage advice, coming from a woman who clearly had her own husband tied neatly in
knots, bemused her. Had Mrs. Greasley noticed more about their relationship than Lisette
had given her credit for? Or was that just the woman’s usual advice to newly married
women?