Читать книгу The Golden Lord - Miranda Jarrett - Страница 9

H e’d not made such a blatant misstep—or such a fool of himself—in years.

Brant stood at the tall, darkened window of the library where he’d fled, and swore again. As a rule, he wasn’t a man overly given to swearing, but this time he knew he deserved every single oath he could muster, and a few more that he invented spontaneously.

The girl had done nothing at all worthy of his idiocy. Without a murmur, she’d gone along with his inane impulse to dine together. She’d made a brave best of his attempts at conversation, and she’d answered his questions as well as her poor battered head permitted. That bruise must have pained her abominably, yet she hadn’t complained once. She hadn’t been able to remember her own name, but she had recalled Jetty and Gus, which was far more than a self-centered dunderhead like himself could reasonably expect from any woman in her situation.

She had, in short, behaved as perfectly as any true lady would, with grace, charm and wit, and an astonishing degree of loveliness. At least he could be objective about that. In London he’d known scores of famous beauties—actresses, titled ladies, courtesans—who’d never have the kind of innate appeal this girl displayed with her braided hair, upturned eyes and, yes, even with that great violet blossom of a bruise on her temple.

So why, then, when all she’d done was to mistake him for what he wasn’t, had he turned on her like some raving Bedlamite?

He groaned and swore again. At least if he were in Bedlam, he’d be safely under lock and key, unable to offend the rest of the world.

He felt something bump against his leg and looked down to see Jetty beside him, panting happily just to be at his side. With a final halfhearted oath, Brant reached down to ruffle the dog’s ears.

“We broke the rules, didn’t we, old Jetty?” he said softly. “Claremont Hall’s always been for us bachelors alone. You know the arrangement, the same as I. No females permitted, not ever. You shouldn’t have found that young lady beneath those trees, and I shouldn’t have brought her back here, so I could make a right flaming ass of myself.”

The dog gave a sympathetic low growl in the back of his throat, turning to look toward the doorway and the approaching footsteps that he’d heard before Brant.

“Good lad,” murmured Brant as the knock finally came on the door. “You’ve saved me from doing it again before another witness. Isn’t that true, Tway?”

The small, pale man in the black suit and snuff wig only bowed slightly over the salver full of letters in his hands. “As you say, Your Grace.”

Brant smiled, oddly comforted by the man’s predictable reply. If anything at Claremont Hall would be unaffected by this young woman’s appearance, it would be Tway, his manservant, secretary, steward and unflaggingly loyal salvation for the last ten years of Brant’s life. His brothers made sport of Tway, noting how his colorless face must have been pinched from old tallow candles, or wagering over what disaster would befall Tway’s mouth if he ever actually smiled. Yet Brant never joined in their jests. Deep down he trusted Tway more than he did either of those same brothers, and with good reason, too. How could it be otherwise, when Tway was the one man alive who understood his shameful secret?

“Your correspondence, Your Grace,” continued Tway, raising the salver a fraction higher, as if the neatly piled letters were an offering. “Do you still wish to make your replies now, or shall I put them aside for tomorrow?”

“Now,” said Brant without hesitation, dropping into an armchair with Jetty settling at his feet. He’d forgotten that he’d set aside this time for business, but the task of answering the requests and queries would help shift his thoughts from the girl. The same easy comprehension of the patterns, percentages and probability that made him so successful at the gaming table had carried over into investing and speculation, even into ungentlemanly trade, and earned him the wealth to match his peerage. “I doubt that there’s anything in there that will improve with age like a wheel of cheese.”

“Very well, Your Grace.” Tway nodded, setting the tray on the desk. He reached for the first letter on the stack and held it open before him, the corners pinched daintily between his thumbs and forefingers. “This first is from Mr. Samuel Lippit of the Pennyworth Mines.”

“Doubtless, Lippit is unhappy about my suggestions for improving the mine.” The Welsh tin mine was one of Brant’s newer business ventures, an experiment that seemed likely to cost him dearly before it turned a profit. “He has always seemed disinclined to make such investments, regardless of the returns they will produce.”

“Precisely so, Your Grace,” agreed Tway. “Shall I commence?”

“Please.” Brant, his legs more comfortably before him as Tway began reading the letter aloud. This was how he and Tway conducted all his correspondence, from detailed arrangements regarding his investments to the most intimate billets-doux from lady friends in London. In the beginning, Brant had claimed a weakness of the eyes prevented him from reading and writing, but he was sure that Tway had long ago deciphered the truth for himself. Yet nothing was ever said between them on the subject, any more than there was further discussion about the nearby cottage that Brant had provided for Tway’s aged mother. It was, in Brant’s opinion, a quite perfect arrangement.

Now Brant closed his eyes to help concentrate on the words that Tway was reading and to compose the proper response to dictate, the way he’d done countless times before. But, instead of that well-organized response, the only thing that kept stubbornly drifting into his thoughts was the girl’s elfin face, the way her tip-turned eyes had glowed when she’d challenged him, how their expression had softened when she’d asked after his dogs, how she—blast it all, she did not belong there, or here, or anywhere else at Claremont Hall!

“Forgive me, Your Grace?” asked Tway, his pen stilled over the letter. “I do not believe I heard you properly, Your Grace.”

“You damned well heard more than enough,” said Brant in enough of a growl to make Jetty’s ear perk. “Have there been any replies to our inquiries about the young lady?”

The corners of Tway’s thin-lipped mouth turned down with disappointment. “No, Your Grace. Not yet. But I should expect some response by dawn.”

“You’re not blathering it all over the county, are you?” demanded Brant with concern. “She’s a lady, you know, not some circus wire dancer with her face pasted on broadsides to the walls of stableyards.”

“Of course, Your Grace,” answered Tway, his voice determinedly soothing. “I have supervised every inquiry myself, Your Grace.”

“Mind you, no interfering sheriffs or magistrates, either.” The girl had already suffered enough without becoming the centerpiece of some sort of county scandal. Hell, for all he knew she already was—a rebellious daughter, perhaps, or an eloping heiress. Anything was possible.

“No, Your Grace. The lady’s name shall remain untrammeled by the public.”

“Very good, Tway,” said Brant, taking another deep breath. “I am reassured.”

But he wasn’t, not at all. He had always considered himself the model English gentleman where ladies were concerned, endlessly polite yet coolly distant. He was a peer, a man of the world. Yet here he was, fussing over this girl and her welfare as if she truly mattered to him, and the harder he tried to stop, the more willfully his foolish brain seemed drawn back to her. And having his dinner brought to her bedside, pretending there was some sort of friendship or intimacy between them—what manner of nonsense had that been?

He really was behaving like a witless ninny, and though he stopped his fingers from drumming on the arm of his chair as soon as he realized he was doing it, he wasn’t fast enough to escape Tway’s notice.

“Her family shall be found, Your Grace,” Tway continued in that same calming tone that Brant, in his present humor, could only find infuriating. “You may be sure of that. And might I say, Your Grace, that I am certain her family will be much gratified by your concern for her welfare?”

“You may say no such thing, Tway,” said Brant irritably. He’d taken the girl in because he couldn’t very well have left her there beneath the trees, not because he wished fame for doing good. Surely, Tway of all men should realize that. “You’ll ruin my reputation if you spread drivel like that.”

Unperturbed, Tway dipped his pen into the ink and waited expectedly over the half-written letter before him. “You were advising Mr. Lippit on the matter of reinforcing the north shaft with new timbers for the safety of the miners working within it.”

Tway was right, of course, in his characteristically roundabout way. What Brant needed to do was to focus on the work before him, on his genuine obligations. If he didn’t wish to make a babbling ass of himself again, then he’d have to be sure to keep away from the situations where it happened. Hadn’t he learned that in his first year in London? Didn’t he know by now that no woman—any woman—could hold a lasting place in his life, not if he wished to keep his secret and his sanity? Hadn’t he long ago decided never to wed and risk passing along his shameful disability to an innocent child?

He should be trusting his own hard-won experience, not his dogs. No more amusing himself with this girl in the guise of concern, and no more cozy bedside suppers as if she were his mistress, instead of an uninvited temporary guest.

He studied the stack of waiting letters with new resolve. “What else is there besides Lippit?”

“Lord Randolph and Lord Andrew wish your support for their bill, Your Grace,” continued Tway. “The overseer from your estate in Northumberland seeks approval for certain improvements, a gentleman inventor wishes you to invest in his new steam engine, and the usual ladies request the honor of your company for the usual invitations.”

Brant nodded with new determination. Surely that should be enough to make him forget a dozen girls with winsome smiles. “That is all, Tway?”

“Not quite, Your Grace.” He slid the last letter from the bottom, tipping it so that Brant could see the familiar seal for himself. “As was previously arranged, Your Grace, Captain His Lordship Claremont and her ladyship will be arriving here in a fortnight for the christening in the chapel, as will Lord and Lady Revell.”

Blast. How in blazes had he forgotten that particular obligation? When, soon after Valentine’s Day, his younger brother George and his wife had produced the first legitimate child in the next generation of Claremonts, Brant had expansively offered to have the boy baptized in the family chapel, with all due pomp and ritual. He was vastly fond of George and his youngest brother Revell, too, and delighted that both his brothers had finally found so much happiness in the last year, both with new brides. Besides, George’s son was now the heir to Brant’s title, at least until the unlikely event he sired a child of his own.

So what could explain why he was suddenly feeling so damned melancholy about such a joyful family celebration?

What do you wish me to be…?

She couldn’t have guessed the truth, and yet she had. How could she know that all his life he’d wished himself to be other than the sorry creature he’d been born?

“You need not concern yourself, Your Grace,” Tway was saying, for once misinterpreting Brant’s silence. “Most certainly the young lady will have been reunited with her family before then. You can be sure that she shall be quite gone from Claremont Hall before Captain His Lordship arrives.”

“Quite,” said Brant softly. There was no useful reason to correct Tway’s misconception, any more than there had ever been any lasting purpose to trying to change himself, no matter how hard he tried. “Now pray, return to Lippit’s reply, or we shall be at this until dawn.”

Jenny lay awake for what seemed like an eternity, listening until she was sure the rest of the household was fast asleep for the night. She slipped from the bed, wrapping the coverlet around her shoulders as a makeshift shawl, and padded barefoot across the darkened room to the window. Cautiously she pushed aside the heavy curtains a fraction, peering down along the walls to the house’s other windows. All were as dark as her own, and with relief she pushed the curtains more widely open. The window’s sash was latched but not locked, and she easily slid it open.

The clean night air rushed into the closed room, sweet with the songs of night birds and the scent of the lawns and the flower gardens, and she breathed deeply. That alone helped lessen the ache that still throbbed in her head; she’d always preferred the outdoors anyway, and hated feeling trapped in a closed-up house, particularly one where she’d already made such a mess of things, and without even trying, either.

With the coverlet bunched around her shoulders, she swung her legs over the sill. A narrow balcony ran along the facade beneath the windows, and though there was no doorway from her bedchamber, it was simple enough for Jenny to slip down to the paving stones and hurry along to the end of the balustrade, keeping close to the wall and away from the moonlight.

Anxiously she scanned the shadowy fringes of the trees and bushes, waving the coverlet back and forth as she searched for a sign from her brother. The few times they’d been separated by chance before, Rob had always reunited with her, one way or another, by the following night, and together they would then plot their next step. Rob would know exactly how to soothe this duke that she’d only been able to insult. She wasn’t even sure how she’d insulted him—asking a man what he’d like her to be had always been one of her standard questions, making them puff up and preen that she’d be so obliging when all she was really doing was learning more about them for Rob.

But tonight no matter how hard Jenny studied the gardens, there wasn’t a sign of her brother’s cheerful face popping from beneath the hemlocks, no false owl’s hoot calculated to catch her ear. She twisted her hands inside the coverlet, her apprehension growing with every second. It wasn’t like Rob to abandon her like this. Surely even given her accident, she must be easy enough for him to find, especially if the duke in turn was seeking information about her family in the most worrisome way imaginable.

No. The only answer—the answer Jenny desperately didn’t want to accept—was that the irate grenadier had caused Rob more trouble than he’d expected. With another worried little prayer for his safety, she leaned over the edge of the stone wall, hoping against hope to finally spot her wayward brother.

“Ha, so it is you, Miss Corinthia, surprising me again,” said the duke behind her, so suddenly that she gasped with surprise. “Here I thought I was the only ghost to patrol this walk.”

Jenny turned to face him, thankful that the moonlight would hide her guilty flush. At least she hadn’t been interrupted calling Rob’s name, or far worse, with Rob himself here on this walkway with her.

“Your Grace,” she said with a little dipping curtsy inside her coverlet cocoon. “I should say you are far too much of this world for me to mistake you for a ghost.”

“Flesh and blood and bone, you mean.” He held his hand out toward her to judge for herself. “I can assure you I’m real enough.”

She didn’t have to take his hand to know that. He had shed his jacket and unbuttoned his waistcoat, and the neck of his shirt was unbuttoned over his throat and a good deal of his bare chest. His sleeves were carelessly shoved above his elbows and his hair was no longer sleekly combed but rumpled and tousled, the way she’d remembered from when he’d first found her. He looked comfortably disheveled, too, more relaxed and also somehow much more male, as if a veneer of gentlemanly propriety had been shed along with the stiffly embroidered evening coat.

Had he forgiven her? she wondered warily. Heaven knew dukes could do whatever they pleased. Was this his way of showing that he was willing to overlook whatever unwitting misstep she’d made earlier?

“I trust my eyes to tell me the truth, Your Grace,” she said, hugging the coverlet around her shoulders. “I could scarce mistake a gentleman as imposing as yourself for some wandering specter.”

“Ah,” he said lightly, lowering his hand to the balustrade as his gaze never left her face. “So much for the magic spell cast by moonlight. Are you feeling better, then?”

“Thank you, quite.” She nodded, nervously smoothing her hair back behind one ear. How could she not be nervous, considering how carefully she’d have to tread with him? “Your Grace, please let me ask your forgiveness for…for whatever I said before that…that disturbed you so.”

He frowned. “Nothing disturbed me,” he said, “and so there’s no reason to apologize. Shouldn’t you return to your bed?”

“I’m not sleepy,” she said. “When I asked you what you wished me to be, Your Grace, I meant nothing wrongful by it. I only meant that because I could—can—recall nothing of my past, it seemed reasonable enough to look forward, to the present and the future where for now you are the only constant.”

“I can send for a sleeping draught from Dr. Gristead if you wish.” His looked down at his fingers resting on the moss-dappled stone, considering. “You are my guest. That is all. I have asked for no such grand gesture as to make me the center of your universe.”

“It’s fresh air that I sought, not sleep,” she said, “much the same as you did yourself. And I intend no grand gesturing, Your Grace. Rather, it’s the one practical thing I can seize for myself. If I have no other past, then I must make do with what I have in the present. And that, you see, is you.”

Oh, Jenny, Jenny, that was awkwardly phrased, and to what purpose? Think, lass, think! Think of what Rob would say, how many useful details he’d be learning of the duke and his circumstances in this precious time alone together, while all you can do is to babble on like some giddy green serving girl!

“I haven’t even tried to sleep yet,” the duke was saying, still looking away from her. “You see how I haven’t changed my clothes since supper. From habit I seldom see my bed before three or even four.”

“Fine gentleman often don’t, Your Grace.” She’d learned that from her father, who’d freely embraced gentlemanly habits—gaming, drinking and other such late-night amusements—without the income to support them. “I’d scarce expect you to keep farmer’s hours and rise with the cock’s crow.”

He smiled at her, something so unexpected that she felt a shiver of startled pleasure ripple down her spine.

“But I do keep farmer’s hours,” he admitted, “especially here in the country. I find I can accomplish all manner of things when the sun is down. Some nights I simply don’t sleep at all.”

“But that’s not good for you, Your Grace!” she protested, gliding over the nighttime accomplishments. Those were best left without inquiry, at least while she wore only a coverlet and a nightshift and most especially while she was feeling so giddy in his presence. “Perhaps you should be the one to ask for a sleeping draught.”

“I think not.” He shrugged carelessly, a simple gesture filled with potent charm. “I’ve been like that as long as I can recall, at least since I was boy at school. Besides, if I’d been snoring away yesterday morning, the way you’d have me do, then I wouldn’t have gone out with Jetty and Gus, and I—rather, they—wouldn’t have found you.”

She ducked her chin contritely. “I should thank you again, Your Grace, if you would but allow me.”

“Which I won’t, because it’s not necessary.” He tapped his palm on the balustrade and smiled again, the kind of smile meant to end their conversation as definitely as a period did a sentence. “Now whether either one of us plans to sleep or not, Miss Corinthia, perhaps it would be best if we each returned to our separate—”

“No—that is, not yet!” She gulped, wondering desperately what had become of all her well-practiced poise in such positions. She was supposed to be good at this. “That is, the evening is so fair, and I am not tired, and you aren’t, either, and…and—”

“And so we should remain here together awhile longer?”

She nodded vigorously, relieved he’d understood despite her dithering.

“Even if this must seem a, ah, compromising situation for a young lady like yourself?” he asked, more bemused than scandalized. “Swaddled only in bedclothes, your feet quite bare, alone in the moonlight with a wicked old rogue like me?”

She made a little puff of indignation. “I never said you were wicked, or old, or a rogue!”

He laughed, and roguishly, too. “I’ll admit I’m gratified by that, even though I shouldn’t be. You know there are others who would judge me with far less sympathy in these circumstances.”

“I wouldn’t. Besides, who else will ever know?” she asked, sweeping one arm, draped with a coverlet wing, to encompass the rest of the sleeping household. “Who is there to see us, Your Grace, or even to miss us when—oh, please, you are not married, are you?”

“I?” he asked, a question to her question and no answer at all. “Why?”

“Because I should like to know, Your Grace,” she explained. “Not because I have any designs upon you, but because while being your guest is one thing, being the guest of you and your lady wife would be quite another altogether.”

“Ah,” he said. “So you would expect her to have come inspected you by now?”

“Well, yes.” Jenny smiled wryly. “I don’t believe any wife worth her salt would lump me into the same category as a stray puppy.”

“And here we had a straw-filled basket and a dish of warm milk all ready for you in the stable, right beside Jetty and Gus!” He chuckled, but the smile didn’t last and even in the moonlight she could see the fresh wariness in his expression. “But tell me. Why does my being wed seem so damned inevitable?”

“Because of who you are, Your Grace,” she answered promptly, with another little curtsy for emphasis. “You’re not like common folk, free to marry or not as we please. Dukes must marry their duchesses, to produce the next generation of heirs to your lands and titles and goodness knows what else.”

“But I’m not married,” he protested. “Never have, nor likely ever shall.”

“No, Your Grace?” she asked curiously. “How…how remarkable.”

Of course Rob would judge it not only remarkable but remarkably lucky. It was always easier to win the confidence and trust of a lonely bachelor, to gull him without a wife to ask suspicious questions about where his money was going. That was the situation here, as Rob would see at once, and one he and Jenny had worked often before.

And yet for Jenny it wasn’t the same at all. How could she lump this duke into the same hamper with the other fusty old bachelors with bad teeth and ill-fitting wigs that she and Rob had known?

“‘Remarkable’?” he repeated, still guarded. “You consider it so remarkable that I have never inflicted myself upon some poor woman in matrimony?”

“No,” she said. “Rather I think it remarkable that no woman has inflicted herself upon you. Surely you must have a trail of broken hearts to your credit.”

“I can assure you there’s not a one,” he said, his wariness fading, as if she hadn’t said what he’d been dreading after all. “You flatter me to believe otherwise, miss, but if you knew me better, you’d realize that I’m hardly the great prize you seem to think.”

She frowned. Of course he was a prize. He was a duke.

“But let us speak of you, instead,” he continued. “Are you some fortunate man’s wife?”

“Oh, no,” she answered promptly, her thoughts still on the question of prizes. “I’m most certainly not married.”

He paused, letting her answer hang between them for so long that now she was the uneasy one.

“You’ve remembered that much more, then? Enough to make you sure there’s no worried husband scouring the countryside for you?”

“There’s not—there can’t be—because I would know,” she said softly, and as she did, she realized how much she meant it, too. “If I loved a man enough to marry him, nothing would make me forget him.”

“That’s a rashly romantic thing to say,” he scoffed. “If you’ve been struck hard enough to have forgotten the name you’ve had since birth, how could you possibly remember your lover’s, instead? Here, give me your left hand.”

Before she could refuse, he’d claimed it for himself, holding her fingers up into the moonlight.

“There now, that’s more logical proof,” he said. “No wedding ring.”

She pulled her hand free, rubbing the empty finger where he’d touched it. “My ring could have been stolen by Gypsies.”

“Then thieves would have taken the gold hoops from your ears, as well,” he countered. “Besides, a ring worn day and night, such as a wedding ring, would have left its mark upon your finger.”

Gemini, he was quick at this sort of banter, quick as Rob! “All that proves is what I said before. That even if my head cannot say for certain if I’ve a husband or not, my heart—my soul!—would never forget.”

He wrinkled his nose as if he’d smelled something foul. “Rubbish,” he declared. “Only poets and over-wrought young girls believe that.”

“Then you do not believe in love, Your Grace?”

He sighed with world-weary resignation. “I believe that men and women can find a thousand ways to amuse one another in bed and out of it, and call it love,” he said. “And I believe in the useful partnership of marriage for producing children, if it brings reasonable happiness and contentment to both the husband and the wife. But as for Cupid’s darts and boundless souls and all the rest of the established claptrap—no, I do not believe in that, for it doesn’t exist.”

She frowned, perplexed. The duke was claiming to be exactly the opposite of her brother, who could fall in love with a donkey if she fluttered her lashes at him. “Then you have never been in love for yourself, Your Grace, have you?”

“I have generally tried to govern myself by reason,” he said with a solemnity at odds with his disheveled hair and unbuttoned shirt. “I’ve always tried to avoid being ruled by my passions.”

“If you can say that, Your Grace, then you simply haven’t met the special one who’ll convince you otherwise,” she suggested. “I know that must be the case with me. I have yet to find any gentleman that pleases me enough to love. But I shall. I know it.”

“Ah, and so we are back where we began,” he said softly, his half smile now unexpectedly bittersweet. “Here we are, with your heart able to recollect more than your head.”

“I suppose we are, Your Grace.” She drew the coverlet more tightly around her shoulders. Ordinarily she would have laughed and tipped her head to one side in the well-practiced way that gentlemen found so charming.

Yet this time didn’t feel ordinary. Perhaps it was only the bruise on her forehead, or perhaps it was the moonlight addling her wits and making her see things in his expression that weren’t truly there. This time, just this once, she wished she didn’t have to do what she’d practiced. She longed to be able to explain what he said, to ask if that bittersweet half smile meant that he, too, still longed to find the love that didn’t seem to exist.

But he was the grand Duke of Strachen, while she was no more than an invented girl named Corinthia, not even real. Her sole purpose in being here in this house—and only from purest luck at that—was to be pleasing enough that the duke would think kindly toward whatever scheme Rob would decide to invent. Tonight’s moonlight would never matter as much as the money—a loan, an investment, or a gift—that Rob would coax from the duke’s pocket, especially not after she and Rob vanished one morning, off into the next set of false names and identities.

No, better to smile than to dream, and far, far better to keep her wits sharp and keen than to go longing for something that couldn’t be changed. The moment she began thinking with her heart, instead of her head was the same moment the luck would end, and she and Rob would find themselves taken up and tried as common criminals, with transportation or the gallows as their final reward.

That is, if Rob ever did return to find her….

“You are cold,” the duke was saying with concern. “You’re shivering.”

“No, Your Grace,” she said quickly, forcing her smile to be winning even as she began inching back toward her window. If she’d shivered, it had been from the reminder of the gallows and her fears for Rob, not a common chill, and certainly not from anything that he could remedy. “Only…only more weary than I first thought.”

He took a step toward her, his hand gallantly outstretched to offer support. “Then let me guide you back to your rooms. There are, you know, easier paths than hopping through the window.”

“The window does well enough for me, Your Grace.” Tonight she was the one running away, not him, but it was the wisest course—the only course, really—before she blundered and said or did something that couldn’t be undone. Far better to retreat now, until morning, when she could meet him with a clear head in the bright, unmagical light of day.

Lightly she pulled herself up onto the windowsill before he could stop her, the coverlet billowing around her bare legs.

“You were right before, Your Grace,” she said breathlessly. “We should say good evening now and part. Good night, and pleasant dreams. Good night!”