Four Nights With the Duke, Page 2

  Her own less-than-delicate hands were trembling, so she curled them into fists, watching as her groom announced her name. Vander’s butler—or, to be exact, the Duke of Pindar’s butler—glanced down at her, patently surprised that a young lady had arrived without a chaperone.

  Did intense humiliation count as Mortal Danger?

  No, because if it were possible to die of humiliation, she would surely be dead by now. After all, she had survived the mortifying poetry incident in Villiers’s library all those years ago, then she’d failed on the marriage market, only to go through an even worse humiliation: being jilted at the altar a month ago.

  The truth was that as an author she was always kind to her characters. Mortal Danger never included jiltings. What’s more, thanks to her heroines’ thin, wispy bodies, they always floated safely downstream, too light to sink. Another author she knew had caused a character to die after an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head. Murder by tortoise?

  Not in a Lucibella novel!

  Her readers knew that there would be no bloodthirsty birds, no one left at the altar. She had never forced any of her heroines to propose marriage, let alone to a duke.

  Gentlemen fell at her heroines’ feet, not the other way around. It was a strict requirement of the genre. Lord knows, Lucibella Delicosa disappointed her readers at her own peril: a torrent of indignant letters would pour through her publisher’s door if she were to shame one of her heroines the way Mia was about to be shamed.

  But at least, Mia reminded herself, she was not, in reality, falling at Vander’s feet.

  She was in charge.

  In control.

  Before she could think better of it, she took a deep breath, handed her pelisse to the butler, and marched past him into the morning room. Mia had spent a good deal of time in the ducal country estate as a young girl, given the late duchess’ decades-long affaire with her father, and she knew where she was headed.

  Even though the principal players in that drama—her father and Vander’s mother—had passed away, it seemed nothing had changed in the manor house. Every horizontal surface was still crowded with animal figurines, evidence of the late duchess’ fascination with small creatures.

  She turned to the butler. “Please let His Grace know that my call shall be quite brief.”

  “I shall ascertain whether His Grace is receiving,” he said, and left.

  Surely Vander would see her? How could he deny her, given their parents’ relationship? Commonsense reminded her that he might well deny her for that precise reason.

  She wandered over to look at the glass menagerie that resided on the mantelpiece. The unicorn had lost his horn, but all the animals were still there, silently poised with a paw up or a tail waving—some with little animal families, as though they had paired off and multiplied while the house slept.

  But she couldn’t concentrate on the little curl of glass, a tadpole, she picked up. The thought of what lay ahead of her—the marriage proposal—made her feel dizzy, as if her corset was constricting her chest and making it hard to breathe. Years before, when she’d vowed to Vander’s face never to marry him, a gleam of amusement had sprung to his eyes.

  What if he burst out laughing now?

  She was not exquisitely beautiful, refined, intelligent . . . and she didn’t even have a fortune. Whoever heard of a wallflower asking a duke for his hand in marriage?

  Mia took another deep breath. She wasn’t precisely asking the duke to marry her. That would be pitiful. She was blackmailing him, which was altogether different.

  More swashbuckling. More perilous.

  More criminal.

  She should pretend this wasn’t happening to her, but to one of her heroines, the way she did with almost everything else. She already had plenty of practice observing her life as if from outside. She regularly chatted with patently bored gentlemen, simultaneously rewriting the conversation in such a way that a fantastically idealized version of herself left them dumbstruck with desire.

  Back home she would jot down the scene precisely as she had reimagined it—giving herself violet eyes and a slim waist. Sometimes she stayed up all night describing the adventures of one of her heroines, a girl so well-mannered, biddable, and pure of heart that only the most discerning readers noticed she was quite intelligent.

  In contrast, men noticed that Mia was intelligent, but it seemed to put them off.

  If life imitated one of her novels, Vander would stride into the room and after one glance begin wooing her with such passion that the distasteful question of blackmail would never need be mentioned.

  His blue eyes would flare with possessive fervor. For the rest of his life, His Grace would regret the thirteen years he might have spent with her, but had lost due to his callow and callous blindness as a boy. He would bitterly reproach himself for his cruel insults.

  Unfortunately, that was more than unlikely. In Mia’s experience, people never regretted clever insults, no matter how much they might sting the recipient.

  She hated cabbage to this day. As well as Oakenrott.

  A queer numbness came over her. She, Emilia Gwendolyn Carrington, was about to coerce a duke into marrying her. An old maid in her twenties, possessed of neither violet-colored eyes nor a slender waist, was—

  This was not a helpful train of thought.

  She had to stop trembling. The proposal wasn’t for her benefit. Nor was it for an extended period of time. She simply needed Vander to marry her in name only, for a year at most. It was the only way she could take guardianship of her nephew, Charles Wallace.

  Nephew? In all the ways that counted, Charlie was her son. Her own child.

  She took a deep breath. Women dove from the decks of tall ships to save children fallen overboard. They fought tigers and wild boars.

  What was a mere duke compared to a man-eating carnivore? She’d heard some creatures had such large teeth that they could be hollowed out and used as soup ladles.

  Right.

  The tricky part was that Mr. Plummer, her solicitor, had been adamant that the duke could not be informed of the reasons for her proposal, or His Grace would almost certainly say no.

  By marrying her, the duke not only took on guardianship of a small boy; he gained control of an extremely large estate running adjacent to his, which would look highly suspicious to his peers. Their marriage would be a cause célèbre without even taking into account the scandals caused by their parents: Vander would undoubtedly face a lawsuit charging him with theft of the estate from Charlie’s uncle on his mother’s side, Sir Richard Magruder.

  Vander—His Grace, the Duke of Pindar—was just another supercilious, privileged, silly man, she reminded herself. He wasn’t a tiger with soup ladles for teeth.

  She could do this.

  She must do this.

  Chapter Two

  NOTES ON An Angel’s Form and a Devil’s Heart: a Novel

  Heroine is slender, ethereal, willowy . . . another way to say thin? Strangely light for someone who actually eats breakfast.

  So desirable that the hero is struck dumb at the very sight of her. Blue eyes, yellow hair, dainty everything.

  Lace coming into fashion? Lace-maker. Research how lace is made. Bobbins?

  First sight, hero on his knees. In the rain.

  Mud.

  Definitely mud.

  “Your Grace, a Miss Carrington is requesting to speak to you.”

  For a moment Vander had no idea who she was. Then he realized it had to be Mia, the hapless poet. His complete avoidance of polite society in favor of the stables meant that he hadn’t seen her in years.

  “Did she give any indication of the reason for her visit?”

  “No, Your Grace. She is in the morning room, should you wish to speak to her, or I can inform her that you are busy at this time. I might add that she is unaccompanied. Furthermore, your solicitor is in the library. He has been waiting some time and is becoming impatient.”

  The last time he could remember ha
ving seen Mia was that bloody embarrassing thing that happened when they were fifteen.

  What in the hell was she thinking, calling on him early in the morning, without a chaperone? Why call on him at all?

  “I’ll go to Miss Carrington,” he decided, heading from his bedchamber. He owed the poet an audience, if only because he should have handled that situation better. The very memory made him shudder a little. He had been stupid and young, but even so, he’d behaved like an ass.

  Vander strode down the stairs adjusting his cuffs. Mia’s name must have been as besmirched as his by their parents’ deaths a year ago. There was no covering up the fact that the Duchess of Pindar had died in bed with Lord Carrington. All of England knew about the damaged stove flue that had led to their deaths: that flare of scandal had eclipsed the deaths of eight other unfortunates sleeping in the same inn—a list that had included Mia’s brother and sister-in-law, if he remembered correctly. It must have been a terrible year for her.

  Just as he reached the final step, his solicitor, Grieg, erupted from the library and accosted him. Vander almost groaned aloud as he listened. Apparently, Sir Cuthbert had made a rash promise to finance an archaeological expedition to the Andes Mountains.

  Insofar as his uncle’s sole source of income was the allowance Vander gave him, which Chuffy promptly spent on velvet coats and bottles of sack, he wasn’t in a position to make good on the promise. It seemed that Chuffy had got around that little problem by scrawling a note promising that the Duke of Pindar would back the expedition.

  He would have to tell Chuffy that his funds were tied up in his stables and he could not finance an expedition to the Andes at this time. Or, for that matter, ever.

  The primary thing he remembered about Mia Carrington was that she had a chubby face and magnificent breasts.

  All these years later, her face was thinner. Presumably her breasts were still there, but she was wearing a drab gown of homespun that concealed everything below her chin. She looked like a missionary. Perhaps she’d become one?

  He felt a flash of sympathy. Her religious leanings, if she had them, were likely a response to their parents’ blatant disregard for the sanctity of marriage. Though if she had come to try to proselytize—

  “Your Grace,” she said, dropping a curtsy. “How very wonderful to see you again.”

  Was that a drop of sarcasm in her voice? Surely not. After all, she was the one who had come, uninvited, to his house, not the other way around.

  He bowed. When he straightened, he found that she was observing him, gloved hands folded, with the air of someone watching a play.

  Peculiar.

  “Miss Carrington, what can I do for you?” he inquired.

  “I have come to request a favor.”

  Vander’s shoulders relaxed. This missionary woman had likely joined a mission in an effort to atone for her licentious father’s sins. She wanted a contribution. He was accustomed to solicitations: virtually everyone in his life except his friend Thorn had asked him for money at some point. It was part and parcel of being a duke.

  A donation was a perfect way to assuage the last of that inconvenient guilt he felt due to hurting her feelings years ago.

  “I would be most happy to help,” he said. “Would you care to be seated? I could ring for tea if you wish.”

  She stood as still as a tree, only her hands twisting together. “You might not feel inclined to be generous after you’ve heard my request.”

  “If only on the basis of having known you since childhood, I assure you that I will agree to whatever sort of help you wish.” He gave her a measured smile, wondering how quickly he could bundle her out of the room. His secretary could hand over the actual sovereigns. “How much would you like?”

  She had a quite delicate jaw. He noticed because it visibly tightened, as if she were grinding her teeth. As a child, she used to be shaped like a stout pigeon, with a little potbelly and legs that whirled across the lawn as she tried to keep up with him.

  Not that she ever could.

  “Miss Carrington,” he prompted, when she didn’t answer, “I gather that you are collecting for a charity, and I assure you that I will contribute.”

  “No,” she said, her jaw tightening again. “I came to ask for something quite different.”

  “I am happy to assist you,” he said, allowing a trace of impatience to leak into his voice.

  “Marriage,” she blurted out, and took a gulp of air.

  He stared at her for one perfectly silent moment.

  “I should like you to marry me.” She said it fast and the words ran together.

  He frowned. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I am proposing marriage,” she stated. Then she closed her mouth.

  Vander had to curb an impulse to shake his head to make sure he had heard correctly. The woman must be touched, though madness ran in his family, not in hers.

  But mad she must be, because she was looking at him expectantly, for all the world as if she thought there was a possibility he took her seriously.

  He cleared his throat. “Well, how kind of you to offer.” Surely this was some sort of ruse? “However, I regret to inform you that I have no intention to marry at this time.”

  Something crossed her face—disappointment? Was that possible?

  “I suppose you think I’m mad. I’m afraid that I am, a bit.”

  “I see.” Vander was, against all expectations, starting to enjoy himself. After all, her family had ruined his. Her father’s seduction of his mother had made the Duchess of Pindar the laughingstock of the ton.

  And now Carrington’s daughter had the temerity to think that he would consider marrying her? Truly, the family had balls.

  Even the women.

  “So you are looking for a husband,” he said agreeably. “And you thought, hey ho, I’ll have a go at a duke?”

  “That is not kind of you,” she said, her eyes narrowing.

  Her eyes were a remarkable green, with thick eyelashes. Not that their color made her in the least attractive; rather the opposite. He preferred women with melting blue eyes. Eyes like the sky in summer.

  “I must insist that you be seated,” he said. “Wooing is such an arduous business, don’t you think?”

  After a long second she moved to a chair opposite his, and damned if she didn’t try again. “Will you marry me, Your Grace?”

  “Absolutely not.” The words shot out like a bullet. “Given our family history, you are the last woman in the world I’d marry. In fact, I believe that you expressed the same sentiment to me some years ago, and I cannot imagine what has changed your mind.”

  She was unbalanced. There was no other explanation for a woman’s proposing to a duke, let alone imagining that he would accept. She suffered from delusions.

  “I can hardly imagine the scandal that a marriage between us would cause,” he added.

  “I am aware that our union would be a subject of speculation,” she said, for all the world as if they were discussing the weather. “I try not to let gossip bother me. Besides, I have come to view our parents’ relationship as something of a star-crossed tragedy.”

  “It’s a tragedy, all right,” he drawled. “Your bastard of a father seduced my mother, made her into a whore, and ruined my family name.”

  Her grip tightened on the arms of her chair, but she showed no other sign of being intimidated. “Our parents loved each other, Your Grace. Their union was not sanctioned by society, but to the best of my observation, it was positively tedious in its domesticity. If not for the accident that took their lives, I am certain that they would have spent the next forty years together.”

  Vander suppressed a shudder. He had loathed Carrington as no other man. He’d worn his hatred for so long it had become comfortable, and he had no interest in reappraising the way it fit.

  For years, he had made damned sure that he and Carrington were never found in the same residence, even if he had to bed down in the stables.

&n
bsp; Which meant that he hadn’t seen his mother for months before her death.

  A stab of guilt made his tone harsher than he intended. “Miss Carrington, I cannot imagine why you believe I would consider your request, let alone agree to it. When—if—I decide to marry, I will both choose the woman, and propose to her myself.”

  Damn it—this was absurd. He had no mistress at the moment, but if he had, anyone in England would guess that she wouldn’t be a short, round woman dressed like a missionary.

  “Why in the hell do you come to me, of all people, with this request?” he asked, with genuine curiosity. “There are a million men in England whom you could marry, if you have determined to go against custom and do your own wooing. Though, to be perfectly candid, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  Under her dreadful gown, he’d guess that she was as lush as she had been at fifteen. Voluptuous, even. If she put her assets on display, she could probably marry almost anyone she wanted. He might prefer the tall, willowy type, but he knew plenty of men who preferred a pocket Venus.

  Beyond which, it wasn’t her mother who had been an adulteress. Far less shame attached to a man who made a duchess his mistress.

  “You have a dowry, don’t you?” he asked, since she hadn’t responded to his previous question. Her family’s lands ran adjacent to his ducal seat, so he would have heard if there were obvious problems. Last he heard, Sir Richard Magruder was running the estate because the Carrington heir was underage. Sir Richard was not a man he admired, but he’d probably do an adequate job.

  “I have a dowry.” She hesitated for a moment, then took a deep breath and pulled a sheet of yellowed paper, folded many times into a small square, out of her reticule. “I also have this.”

  “Bloody hell,” Vander said with a groan. “Not another poem. I’m not a literary fellow, Miss Carrington. You can’t change my mind with a lyric.”

  Her cheeks flamed a surprisingly lovely shade of red. “I would never—” She caught herself and started over. “No, it is not a poem. It’s a letter.”