Mad About the Duke (6 page)

Though he'd left before they'd had much time to discuss those. Why, he'd quite fled out the door once she'd given him the list.

“What possessed you to think
he
could do this?” Lucy asked.

“He helped you, didn't he?”

Lucy nodded, but she looked utterly unconvinced about the situation. “Whatever happened after I left yesterday?”

“I came in and found him in the foyer, looking quite lost. Good heavens, Lucy, you can't just leave a caller sitting in the parlor to see themselves out.”

“I was in a hurry,” she said unapologetically.

“And then Tia came down and said Isidore was having her pups, and Mr. St. Maur helped us—well, he helped Isidore. It's her first litter, after all. And while the pups were arriving, it just struck me that he might be able to help me. He seems a bit rough around the edges, but he has good connections, or so he claims.”

“Oh, I think you'll find his connections most excellent,” Lucy said, rubbing her forehead.

Elinor beamed, her niggle of fear vanishing. “You see,” she said, glancing triumphantly over at Minerva. “Mr. St. Maur will help me make a most excellent match. Perhaps you should retain him as well.”

Minerva shook her head at the pair of them. “A man will have to fall out of the sky and into my bedroom before I marry him.”

They all laughed. Then the bell rang, and Lucy bounded to her feet. “That must be Clifton. He said he would call around for me and he is, if anything, prompt.”

“Anxious to have you back,” Elinor teased.

Lucy blushed. The same Lucy who was undaunted by anything, even facing down Elinor's horrible stepfather, Lord Lewis, actually turned a rosy shade of pink.

Marriage, the right marriage, must be something indeed, Elinor realized.

“Keep me informed about this Mr. St. Maur,” Lucy said, giving Elinor a quick hug. “I will be most curious to see what he turns up. And don't hesitate to ask Thomas-William for help. He was my father's right hand for over forty years. He can be quite resourceful if it comes to that.”

 

Once Lucy was nestled into her new husband's carriage and they were moving down the street, she glanced up at the man she loved, the one who had done battle to gain her favor, and asked the Earl of Clifton, “Just how hard did you hit the Duke of Parkerton?”

 

“Not hit me hard enough?” James sputtered. “He floored me.”

“I saw it, Miranda,” Jack added. “He gave Parkerton his best shot.”

“I still don't believe it was hard enough,” she declared.

“Pardon me?” James said.

“I said, I think the earl should have—”

“Yes, yes. I know what you said.”

“Good, because it appears you still have no idea what you are doing.”

“I don't think this is a matter—”

“You asked for my opinion,” she said so firmly that he stopped.

Oh, good God, he had! And he never asked anyone their opinion. His was always the final and only say on the matter.

Unfortunately, she took his momentary pause as an acquiescence to continue, which she did with some ardor. “You believe you can find the lady a husband?”

“Of course,” he told her. Truly, how hard could it be?

“But, Your Grace, what do you know of the lady?”

James took a step back, for the question seemed quite ridiculous. Why the devil did he need to know anything about a lady to find a man to marry her? Lady Standon was pretty, undeniably so.

Weren't the piles of blossoms in her foyer enough evidence of that? And really, what did a man need to know about a woman other than her bloodlines and how she presented herself?

He hadn't known much at all about Vanessa before he'd married her, and that had turned out well enough.

At least so you thought until she lay dying of child-bed fever.

He shook off echoes of her fever-raked ravings, which haunted him still. No, perhaps his own experience with marriage wasn't the best argument.

Miranda wasn't done. “Does she prefer roses or daisies? Take her tea with sugar or without? Does she like Byron or Coleridge?”

“I hope she doesn't like Byron, the man was an idiot.” He glanced over at Miranda and realized she actually expected him to answer her questions.

Of course, he hadn't a single one. Answer that is.

But he could offer this much. “She likes dogs.” There, he did know something of the lady.

“Excellent,” Miranda conceded. “They will make for boon companions once you've found her some dull husband and deposited her into some mausoleum with a completely indifferent partner who's collected a wife as a favor to you—”

“I hardly think—”

“I wasn't done,” Miranda said in a voice that reminded him of his great-grandmother's. The firm sort of no-nonsense tone that didn't bode well. And when she pointed at the empty chair at the table, he sat.

Then he glanced over at his brother.

Jack shuddered and sent a look of sympathy.
I've warned you how she is
.

Miranda, meanwhile, continued on. “Since you asked my opinion and you seem to think you can find the lady a husband with this ridiculous plan of yours, what if you can't?”

Can't? That was preposterous. Of course he could find her a husband, quickly running through a list of likely candidates and just as quickly discarding them one after another.

Enstone? No, he drinks too much.

Quinton? Oh, heavens never. The demmed fellow cheats at cards.

Bentham? Now there was a good man. Handsome,
rich. James was about to declare his choice aloud when he also remembered that his plan necessitated that he hand Lady Standon over to Bentham, a notion that set his teeth on edge.

He glanced at Miranda, who stared at him with a slightly smug expression on her face, as if to say,
See, this is harder than you think.

“If I can't find a good candidate for the lady, then I will marry her myself.”

He might as well have declared that he was going to go on a trek through the wilds of Africa. Or even Cumberland.

“Marry her?” Jack stammered, catching hold of the back of his chair. “Did I hear you correctly?”

“Yes. If that is what it takes, then perhaps I am the best choice.”

This left Jack gaping, but not Miranda. She stared at him with a sly smile.

“Then let us consider this, Your Grace,” she said, circling around him like a cat. “Say you do marry her. And she moves in. Where is she going to sleep? In your bed, or in that suite you keep locked up like a tomb?”

In my bed,
came the forceful, hard answer, hitting him in the gut with the same power as Clifton's fist.

And that realization sent him reeling. Not until Miranda had posed her question had he considered such a thing.

He wanted Lady Standon.

But he certainly couldn't say that aloud. It was too personal, too much for him to admit.

Because what if she didn't want to share his bed?

As for Vanessa's old room…that room haunted him, as if the very walls still held the secrets his wife
had revealed as she'd lay dying. The ones that had shattered his every memory of his short-lived marriage.

If Elinor married me it would be different…

How could he be so sure?

“She can have whatever suite she prefers,” he conceded, shifting in his boots. The thought of opening Vanessa's rooms, going back into that bedroom, chilled him. “The rooms over the gardens would be perfect. Why, Mrs. Oxton could have them aired in no time.”

“What an excellent idea, Parkerton,” Miranda agreed. “For then you can continue on with your life without a single inconvenience. You can just shake off the dustcovers and everything will be perfectly ordered once again.”

“And what is wrong with that?” he asked, his ire finally getting the better of him.

Miranda came to stand before him. “Because you'll never know the most important thing about marriage.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Which would be?”

“Why she married you.”

This took him aback. Cut him to the quick. Because this is exactly why he'd avoided marrying again.

For how could he ever know the truth? He certainly hadn't with Vanessa.

Still, he wasn't about to concede such a point to Miranda. Especially when she was standing right on top of the truth of the matter.

Better to wage a quick offensive and be done with it than to wade about in such a mire.

“I think why Lady Standon would marry me
would be obvious.” James rose, taking the stance he preferred, tall and proud, as was expected. “Look around, madame, this is hardly Seven Dials.”

This room, like all the others in the duke's town house, nay, mansion, were elegant to the point of intimidating. Gold leaf on the cornices, Italian marble on the floor, Turkish carpets, and rich, brocaded curtains. No drafts, no smoky fireplaces. Just the finest furnishings that money and excellent taste could buy.

“This is your answer? If having all this was the answer,” Miranda told him, “don't you think you would have been on her list in the first place?”

“An oversight, obviously,” he said, though he suspected it wasn't.

“And that is all you want, Your Grace? A grateful wife? A man who hasn't considered marriage in all these years.”

A grateful wife. Those words chafed at him. He could almost hear Vanessa's incoherent cries.

I must marry Parkerton. I must. My father insists. The duke is our only hope to save us from ruin.

But she hadn't been speaking to him. In her fever-induced ravings she'd been confessing all to the phantom lover who'd still held her heart.

James shook off those echoes from the past and said, “Perhaps Clifton's blow has given me a new perspective.” He certainly felt different. In fact, the entire world seemed different.

Since he'd met her…

But Miranda wasn't done. “Don't you think Lady Standon deserves a man who sets her heart afire? Don't you deserve the same?”

She leaned forward and poked him in the chest. Actually stabbed her finger into his coat as if he were
a chicken on the spit. Rather like Lady Standon's harridan of a housekeeper.

“I would think,” she said, “a man in your position would want more. So much more.”

More
? Whatever did that mean?
More
?

He had no idea what she was talking about.

But in a flash he had a devilish inkling of what she meant.

He wanted his name on that demmed list. And at the top. And he wanted Elinor to look at him, nay, gaze at him as if he were the only man in the world capable of saving her.

Meanwhile, Miranda gave up on him, turning on one heel and stomping out of the room in a flurry of furious female vexation.

For a moment James and Jack just stood there, both of them afraid to move lest the noise stir some other thought in her and bring her flying back in to lecture them further. Well, James, that is.

But as it was, she tromped up the stairs. When she was well away, James turned to his brother and said, “My apologies, Jack.”

To James's shock, Jack stood there, rocking back on his boot heels, grinning like a drunken fool. “Apologies? Whatever for?”

“For sending your wife off in such high dudgeons.”

Jack laughed. “That? That is just a prelude.”

James glanced back out the door and toward the stairs. “You mean she'll be even more furious?”

“Oh, she'll be in a rare mood for some time.” Jack walked over and punched James in the shoulder like James had seen other men do with friends, but something Jack had never done to him before.

Their stations in life, James's title and Jack's former wild ways had always put such a distance between them, but in the last day suddenly something had changed.

James had changed.

“It is I who should be thanking you, Parkerton,” Jack told him, strolling toward the door.

“Whatever for? I just riled your wife into a rare state.”

“I know.” There it was, that rakish grin of Jack's. The one that was always the harbinger of trouble. “And I think I'm going upstairs to take advantage of her rare state.” Then he winked and bounded quite happily up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Then it hit James what Jack was actually saying and what he intended to do when he got upstairs and confronted his wife.

In the middle of the afternoon and under this very roof.

James glanced warily up at the ceiling. Oh, good heavens, that was far more information than he wanted to know.

Wheeling around, James headed for the front door, but then realized he was still wearing Jack's wretched jacket. The same poor coat Jack had probably owned when he'd romanced Miranda.

The duke examined the dark wool encasing him and considered the very real truth that he might know very little about women.

About as much as his brother did about fashion.

Egads, could there really be a good reason why he, the Duke of Parkerton, wasn't on Lady Standon's list?

Honestly none that he could think of, but then again, right now his brother was headed upstairs to enjoy the delights of his wife and what was James going to do?

Get out of earshot, that much was for certain.

I
f Elinor thought her plan to hire Mr. St. Maur would be enough to find her a husband, she'd quite mistaken the matter.

For not an hour after Lucy had left, Minerva's Aunt Bedelia arrived. Like an unstoppable windstorm, she blew into the house on Brook Street, feathers fluttering, keen eyes catching every detail around her and her determination resounding in every sharp click of her heels.

A widow four times over, she had recently married her fifth husband, Viscount Chudley, and therefore the newly minted Lady Chudley considered herself the leading expert on the subject of finding and catching a husband.

The Duchess of Hollindrake's
Bachelor Chronicles
had nothing on her.

“Now that I've gone and arranged Lucy Sterling's marriage—,” she announced, taking the spot squarely in the middle of the settee in the sitting room.

Minerva and Elinor exchanged glances. Just as
they'd guessed. The ink was barely dry on the couple's Special License and already Lady Chudley was taking full credit for the match.

Aunt Bedelia settled deeper into the brocade, which boded ill for all of them. It meant she had no intention of leaving.

Not until she'd unleashed whatever plot she'd concocted.

“I've come upon the perfect plan as to how to do the same for the two of you,” she said, revealing her hand. Not that the subject was a surprise.

Minerva crossed her arms over her chest. “Aunt, I have no intention of getting married again.”

This was met with a flutter of a handkerchief. Some might have considered that a certain sign of surrender, but Aunt Bedelia did not know the meaning of the word.

Hence, the five husbands.

“Yes, yes, so you say,” she blustered, “but now that the two of you are the toasts of the Town, you will be besieged with offers.” Aunt Bedelia practically glowed.

“Toasts?” Elinor managed, taking another glance at Minerva, whose cheeks were now about the same color as her muslin gown.

“Yes. Toasts. Diamonds. The
on dit
of the Season. How could you not be? Of course it is all because I arranged for the Earl of Clifton to fall in love with Lucy Sterling—”

Elinor shot Minerva a pointed glance.
Straighten this matter out before it continues. Before it goes too far.

Oh, but it already had.

Aunt Bedelia fluffed the lace on her cuffs. “Lucy's marriage puts the two of you in a new light. For if Lucy Sterling could capture Clifton's heart and steal
him away from Lady Annella, then you two, as the other Standon dowagers, must be—oh, how can I say this politely?”

Minerva had her hand on her brow, as if it were ringing with a blinding megrim. “Just say it, Aunt.”

“Well, you needn't take that tone, Minerva. It is just that your generation isn't as open about these things as mine was, but if you insist…It is being said that because of the speed with which Lucy was able to catch Clifton, she must be as accomplished as her mother is reputed to be…”

Accomplished? Whatever did Aunt Bedelia mean? Then Elinor glanced over at Minerva, and from the hot blush coloring the lady's previously pale features, she understood.

Lucy's Italian mother had an infamous reputation. And now, guilty by association, Society thought that they were just as…

Accomplished.
Elinor blanched. Oh, good heavens!

And worse still, whoever she married would expect that she be…oh, no…
accomplished
.

When nothing could be further from the truth.

But there was no time to consider such a shocking notion, for Aunt Bedelia sprang to her feet and clapped her hands like a Bath master of ceremonies about to open the first assembly of the Season.

“Shopping, my dears,” Aunt Bedelia ordered. “It is time to go shopping. We've hardly begun to beggar Hollindrake's accounts—”

“Aunt, we are in this situation because we were beggaring his accounts to begin with,” her niece pointed out.

The matron waved her off. “But this is different. Once you are married, he will no longer be responsible for your bills, and if he protests, remind him of
the money you will be saving him in the years ahead when you are wed to someone else.”

Elinor's head began to swim, as it usually did around Aunt Bedelia. “If you must know, I have a prior—”

“Nonsense!” Aunt Bedelia said, shooing them both from the parlor into the foyer, where Minerva's maid stood hovering close at hand. Not missing a beat, the matron directed the gel to fetch the necessary accoutrements for this expedition. “It isn't just shopping,” she advised them like a pair of apprentices, “but being seen. By one and all.”

One and all
? Elinor's knees wavered. She had to go out in public when everyone thought she and Minerva were some sort of widowed Cyprians?

But there was no stopping Aunt Bedelia, and before Elinor could come up with a reasonable excuse, short of feigning fits or speaking in tongues, they were bundled up and packed into Lady Chudley's carriage for an afternoon of shopping on Bond Street.

To Elinor's horror, Aunt Bedelia spent the ride going from lists of the upcoming social events they must attend to the right colors to wear for each soiree, ball and musicale so they wouldn't clash with the interior. The lady shuddered and explained, “Lady Godwin-Murphy's ballroom is the most unflattering shade of puce. Why, I've seen unwitting ladies fade right into the walls.”

Elinor did her best to appear the attentive pupil, but she couldn't shake what Aunt Bedelia had said earlier.

“Then you two must be—oh, how can I say this politely—just as accomplished.”

Accomplished
? Whatever was she going to do?

Ask Mr. St. Maur to help you,
said a wicked little voice.
He appears very accomplished.

Elinor shivered, and Aunt Bedelia quite mistook the matter, drawing the lap blanket up higher.

“Dreadfully cold today, isn't it?” the older lady said, hardly pausing for breath as she extolled the color of Lady Shale's second parlor and the likelihood of anyone of merit showing up at her Tuesday card parties.

Elinor merely nodded, trying to listen to the lady's advice when all she could think of was the inevitable truth: she was so very unaccomplished when it came to men.

Oh, she was a widow, and she'd done
that
. But accomplished? Not in the least. And while it had never given her much pause over the years, after Lucy's confession about the joys of lovemaking the other night, Elinor found she couldn't stop thinking about
it
.

And then along came Mr. St. Maur—with his dark, handsome looks and his dangerous veneer—and it was like putting a match to the idea that had been kindling in the back of her thoughts.

A lover.

If she was going to have any inkling of what “accomplished” meant, she needed to take a lover if only to discover what all the fuss was about. And quickly, before she got married and her new husband found her lacking.

Just then, the carriage pulled to a stop before the milliner's shop that Aunt Bedelia swore was the finest in Town.

Dutifully, Elinor and Minerva went to follow the lady inside, but a bolt of fabric in the window of an adjacent shop caught Elinor's eye.

A deep, rich crimson, it was the sort of color she would never consider wearing—puce walls aside—yet something about the passionate hue called to her.

If you wore that crimson, you wouldn't be unaccomplished for long.

And again her thoughts flitted to the dream she'd had. To Mr. St. Maur.

Most decidedly, he would never leave a lady lacking.

“I shall be along in just a moment,” she said, breaking ranks.

“You had best,” Minerva warned, wagging a finger. “For if you think to sneak off and leave me alone with her, there shall be dire consequences!”

Elinor laughed. “I am well aware that if I dared such an affront, she'd hunt me down.”

“Never mind Aunt Bedelia!” Minerva shot back. “I'll have your head on a pike in front of Almack's.”

They both laughed and Minerva continued into the shop while Elinor walked toward the draper's, the crimson bolt of velvet holding her attention.

Oh, it shall be too dear,
she told herself as she came closer. Such fabrics always were.

Not that she'd cared for the last few years, living as she had under the Sterling family largesse.

But that was over. And while it would be nothing to order it up and have the bill sent to the Duke of Hollindrake, as she always had, it wouldn't do to raise the duke's (or more to the point, the duchess's) ire, or she'd find herself living in a hunting box in Scotland. Still, such a fabric might be worth the risk.

“So you've come out of hiding,” a voice from behind her sneered.

Elinor whirled around and found herself face-to-face with her stepfather.

Lord Lewis, who had once been considered handsome, stood before her, bleary-eyed and disheveled. His cravat sat limply at his neck, his coat was rumpled. “Can't keep her from me, you know. Not
any longer. You'll hand her over if you know what's good for you,” he said, looking around for any sign of Tia.

“She's not here,” Elinor told him, “so leave me be.”

“I wouldn't have anything to do with you, you blowsy strumpet, if you hadn't meddled in what isn't your affair.” He leaned forward and an air of stale brandy washed over her. “You stole what is mine.”

“I made sure my sister wasn't sold off into an unfit marriage as you did to me, sir,” Elinor told him tartly, taking a cue from Lucy Sterling, remembering how her friend had stood up to Lewis and won.

He's naught but a coward,
she told herself.
A coward.

“I can do with the chit as I see fit, and you'd best remember that,” he shot back angrily.

A fact Elinor well knew and was the exact reason why she didn't have the coins to outright purchase a good length of the velvet in the window. Nearly every bit of her ready cash had been used up bribing Tia's school mistress to let Elinor take her younger sister out of school in the middle of the term without informing Lord Lewis as to his ward's whereabouts.

Not that the school mistress had kept her word. The devious woman had informed the baron immediately—though Elinor doubted she'd pocketed much from Lord Lewis for the information.

“My sister is no longer your concern, sir.”

“No longer my concern, you say?” he mocked. “I beg to differ. I'll go over to that house of yours and take her right now, if I please.”

Elinor shook her head. “You do so at your own peril.”

“That bitch isn't there to protect you any longer,” he sneered. “I heard how she whored her way into
Clifton's bed and got herself a title. Well, I say good riddance, and now it is my turn for a bit of luck. I'll take your sister and you won't have anyone there to stop me.”

He started to walk away, but Elinor wasn't about to let him go. Not just yet.

“Beware, sir. For Lucy may be gone, but she's left Thomas-William to watch over us. To keep Tia safe. I understand he was trained by her father to be quite ruthless. You'll find him far less forgiving than Lucy or I would be.”

The man blanched, for it was true; he was a coward. He stalked back over to where Elinor stood. “You spiteful little bitch! I should have married you to someone who would have beaten that sharp tongue of yours out of your head. I should have—”

Elinor stopped listening to his vitriolic speech. Instead, she glanced over his shoulder, unwilling to look at the hatred gleaming in his eyes, and instead focused on the glorious crimson fabric in the window. The sort of color that would catch a duke's eye, hold his attention. A duke with enough power to send the likes of Lord Lewis packing.

Permanently.

And while that was a deliciously wicked wish, one she was sure Lucy would have applauded, this was neither the time nor the place for murder, as tempting as it was.

Lewis, who had never exercised a moment of patience in his life, took her reverie as an insult. He caught hold of Elinor's arm and shook her. “Don't stick your hoity-toity nose in the air at me, miss. I got you that fancy title you prance around with, and it is grateful you should be. And now it is your sister's
turn to earn her keep, and you'll hand her over immediately or I shall have Bow Street on you. A few nights in Newgate ought to remind you of where your obligations lay. And if that isn't enough, then I'll—”

But the baron's last threat was cut off as suddenly he rose in the air, his fingers clutching at his throat.

“Then you'll do what?” a deeply masculine voice asked as he shook Lord Lewis like a terrier might a rat.

Elinor's gaze flew up.

St. Maur!

And just as she'd suspected, he wasn't merely a man of business, all papers and figures.

In fact, there was nothing mere about him right now.

 

James had left his house and walked without any purpose or direction (other than to get as far as possible from his brother and sister-in-law's afternoon antics), having left poor Richards and Winston in the foyer gaping after him, their carefully crafted schedule for the remainder of his day in utter ruins.

But right now, his appointment at Gentleman Jim's seemed rather redundant. He'd had enough of fisticuffs this week without paying for the pleasure of being swung at.

Instead, he walked through the park, around the reaches of Mayfair, pursued by that single word his vexing sister-in-law had tossed at him like a gauntlet.

More.

The word taunted him with every tromp of his boot.
More
.

Worse yet, here were Jack and Clifton, living proof that Miranda had hit him with something more than
just a notion. They had discovered the truth behind this mysterious “more” and seized their chances (or rather the ladies who held the key) and were now living like greedy, well-sated sultans.