Читать книгу An American Duchess - Sharon Page - Страница 10
ОглавлениеAT THE SAVOY HOTEL
Several hours later, Nigel pressed a towel filled with ice against his eye, the ice chipped from a block in the kitchens of the Savoy Hotel around the corner from Murray’s. If he were to open the door of his suite, he would hear the strains of the orchestra in the ballroom downstairs, playing jazz for the partying crowd. Drunken laughter. And witness more couples stumbling through the hallways, sinking to the floor to kiss passionately and indecently before they even reached a bedroom. Indecent.
He had ripped off his tie. Now he paced his hotel room like a caged cat.
He had told reporters he was Oswald Warts, Oxford student, and the girl he’d kissed was an actress’s understudy. Luckily, none of the press recognized him, as he was practically a hermit at Brideswell—except for the few times he came up to London to see his man of business and to visit his friend Rupert, who had been badly wounded at the Somme and was in a charity hospital. Given the late hour, he’d insisted they spend the night at the Savoy, and he had taken two suites: one for Julia and Miss Gifford, one for Sebastian and him.
A snore sounded from the adjoining bedroom. Sebastian was sprawled across the bed, fully dressed and unconscious.
“I don’t know what in hell to do.” He wouldn’t sleep tonight. After what had happened, he was certain he would have nightmares. He didn’t want to wake his brother with his screams and have Sebastian witness them.
What could he do? He couldn’t let the wedding go ahead, but what could he do with Sebastian? The problem was not just the rumors; it was Sebastian himself. He was drinking more. He’d grown even angrier, edgier.
Nigel didn’t know how to give his brother any peace. He couldn’t just say: do your duty and prefer females. Father had tried that and it had sent Sebastian on a self-destructive path that had seen him spend much of his time dead drunk.
If the blasted marriage ended in divorce, wouldn’t that lead to more rumors about Sebastian? Of course his wife kicked him out—he was batting for the other team.
Sebastian wasn’t going to be able to fool Zoe Gifford. Her kiss had been hot enough to melt the soles of Nigel’s shoes to the sidewalk. He had never been kissed like that.
It made him hot, when he was so accustomed to feeling empty and cold. It made him hunger for more. But—
“It cannot happen again,” he muttered to his brandy glass. “Not with my brother’s fiancée.”
A soft knock sounded at the door. It was 3:00 a.m. The party in the ballroom was still roaring at full speed—he could feel the rhythm of the music through the floor.
Groaning, he got up. What if he hauled the door open and faced bobbed blond hair, huge violet eyes and painted lips? He remembered discovering traces of her red lipstick on his mouth.
Heat seared him just thinking about it. Perhaps he had better not answer that door. He’d never had his control snap like that. Was it another symptom of shell shock—hauling unsuspecting women into scorching kisses? He didn’t think so, but losing control like that left him stunned.
Another knock. “Langford, open the door. It is Zoe and Julia. We want to make sure you haven’t beaten each other senseless.”
Both of them. At least it meant he wouldn’t be tempted to—
No. Hell, he would never be tempted to do that again.
He took his bag of ice from his eye and opened the door. Miss Gifford walked in, beautiful in a dark blue silk robe tied at her waist and frothing around her ankles. Feathers adorned the neckline and the cuffs. Julia wore a new robe of scarlet silk.
“You have quite a shiner, brother,” Julia observed. “I’ll go check on Sebastian.” She quietly went into their brother’s room.
Miss Gifford walked up to him with her arms folded over her chest. Her face was scrubbed free of makeup. Soft pink lips. Unusual purple eyes with long, gold lashes. Soft, ivory skin.
She was beautiful. Luminous.
Then her finger jabbed his chest. “Julia is afraid she has made you angry. She’s worried she hurt you. Don’t you think she’s grieved enough?” she asked in a quietly furious voice.
She always put him on the defensive. “Of course Julia has not made me angry,” he said. “And of course I want her to stop grieving.”
“Then tell her that. She can’t live in the past. She believes she won’t have a home to live in once you are married. She fears she will be displaced by your wife, and that if she is very lucky, she might be allowed to live in a cottage.” Miss Gifford’s voice vibrated with indignation, though it stayed low in tone. “If this is true,” she went on, “Julia’s only hope for a future is marriage. And she doesn’t want to marry because she is still in love with the man she lost. I can understand what that is like. But she needs to fall in love again, and she can’t if you insist she must act as though it is still 1914. You are like that madwoman in Dickens—Miss Havisham or whatever her name was. Let your sister brush off the cobwebs and take off her unused wedding dress and find love!”
He gazed into her snapping violet eyes. “Thank you.”
“What does that mean? Will you do something? Or are you going to tell her to drop her hems back below her knees this instant?”
“I will talk to her,” he said stiffly. Without the ice on his eye, it stung again.
“Then do it now.” Miss Gifford turned and walked out.
Damn it. All he wanted to do was kiss her. He slapped the bag against his black eye. The pain of doing that helped cool his ardor. Just barely.
Then Julia came out of Sebastian’s room. Cautiously, and that in itself broke his heart.
“Are you very angry? I shouldn’t have done it.” Julia sank down to the wing chair and she looked up at him with tear-filled eyes. “Is it very wrong to go dancing when Anthony never will?”
He didn’t want her to spend her life mourning. He felt like a wretch. She had been grieving, and he was making her worry about his reaction. “It’s not wrong to go on living. Miss Gifford is right about that.”
His little sister looked so different. She had always been elegant, even as a little girl. Now even the way she tilted her head looked lively. Her bouncing hair drew his gaze. She looked freer, lighter, and she glowed in relief from her worry.
“You are extraordinarily beautiful, Julia. You look even lovelier with bobbed hair.” And he meant it. “Do you want me to take you home tomorrow?”
Julia wiped away her barely fallen tears. She gave him a wobbly smile as she stood to return to her room. “No, Zoe will drive me. But we are going to leave you to bring Sebastian home.”
He closed the door after Julia, then lay down on the sofa. He must have slept, but he woke up shouting, bathed in sweat. Jerking upright, he listened, heart pounding. Soft snores came from his brother’s bedroom. His brother was in a deep, drink-induced sleep.
Nigel sank back in relief. He stayed awake until morning, staring at the ceiling. Then he went downstairs, had breakfast and walked into the Savoy’s smoking room.
A high-backed wing chair and a newspaper hid his view of the occupant, but long legs stuck out—shapely legs revealed by a short skirt. Nigel identified the legs at once with a deep sigh.
It was Zoe Gifford—a cigarette held between her fingers, a newspaper in her hands.
All around, elderly gentlemen were muttering. Who had let her in? What were the standards of the Savoy coming to? What was the world coming to?
For a moment, Nigel sympathized with Miss Gifford. A devastating war had killed millions, had recarved Europe, had torn wounds that might scar over but would never heal. And what shocked Englishmen was a woman in the smoking room in a short skirt with her legs crossed.
He took a seat across the room, facing the window, and opened his newspaper.
A shadow fell over him. He lowered the paper. Those legs were in front of him. Zoe blew a smoke ring. “I heard what you said to your sister.”
“You listened in on a private conversation?”
“I was closing the door. It wasn’t my fault you started speaking before you were sure I’d gone. Thank you for what you said to her. She was worried about your disapproval.” Her now-painted lips curved in a smile. “She recognizes she does not have to obey you, but she does not want to fight with you.”
“I told her the truth. Thank you for urging me to.” He cleared his throat. “About what happened outside Murray’s—”
“Don’t worry, Your Grace. You know what American girls are like. We meet a boy at a dance at eight, and we’re necking in a rumble seat with him by midnight.”
He dropped his newspaper. Smiling, Miss Gifford walked away, and he had to loosen his tie.
But she cared about Julia. In the light of morning, he saw she had done a wonderful thing for his sister.
* * *
Zoe took the elevator up to Sebastian’s room. She rapped on the door—repeatedly—until Sebastian threw it open.
His eyes were bloodshot, his golden hair a disheveled mess, his clothes rumpled. “Oh, it’s you, Zoe.” He leaned against the door frame. “I’m in here alone. You shouldn’t come in, angel. It’d be a scandal without a chaperone.”
“In the state you’re in, I doubt anything could happen. Your head must be pounding.”
He groaned. And let her in.
He sprawled in a silk-cushioned chair, long legs spread out in front of him. This time he held the monogrammed towel filled with ice against his head.
Blunt and honest. That was what a Gifford was. “Sebastian, our engagement is a ruse, and it can’t be anything more. I—I was in love with someone else, and I lost him, and I don’t plan on falling in love again. No matter what.”
Sebastian had changed. When she’d met him in New York, he’d oozed charm. Now he seemed to be smoldering with anger all the time. She felt it in his tension, his drinking, his wildness.
On a groan of pain, he got down on one knee before her to take her hand. “I know, Zoe. But I’m falling in love with you. And I can’t help it.”
He gazed up at her, looking hungover, but vulnerable and gorgeous. With his blond hair, long-lashed green eyes, full, pouty lips, Sebastian was breathtaking.
But she didn’t want to kiss Sebastian and she couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss with Langford.
She’d thought him icy? He had been filled with fiery desire. His kiss set all her nerves aflame. She’d almost turned into a puddle on the sidewalk, she’d been so hot.
“I’m not going to fall in love with you, Sebastian. I can’t.”
Because of Richmond. “That’s the only reason why,” she said under her breath as she left Sebastian’s room.
* * *
A loud, sputtering sound came from the gray, cloudy sky over his head.
Nigel froze, reining in Beelzebub so they were motionless on the long stretch of Brideswell’s gravel drive. He knew the sound. It was the tempestuous choking of an aeroplane’s engine. His heart pounded. He expected to hear the explosion of machine-gun fire. That was what you heard—the engine roar over your head, then the cracking sound as the ground around you was blasted by gunfire.
The war was over. Had been for four years. Four years that didn’t seem real at this moment....
Was he just imagining the sound? It was so damn clear against the other sounds he knew of Brideswell—the whip of the wind through trees, the caws of crows.
A bright yellow biplane flew out of a bank of thick cloud. It banked and made a wide turn over the trees that flanked the road at the end of the drive. The plane started to drop, and Nigel realized it was going to land on the lawn.
Then the engine stalled and his heart almost stopped in his chest.
The plane dropped fast. Then the engine roared and it swooped upward, clearing his head generously. As if it had struck Beelzebub, the spooked animal reared.
Nigel had let the reins go slack to watch the aeroplane. Too late, he gripped them, but he lost his balance—
He tumbled from his horse to wet ground. As he hit the earth, he saw the plane touch down.
He pushed up, his back sore and his arse aching. The yellow plane rumbled over the ground, coming to a stop just before the stone wall that bordered the lawn.
Zoe Gifford jumped out, pushed up her goggles and ran to him. “Are you all right? The damn engine is fickle. It ran fine yesterday when I purchased her, but on the way here, she decided to get temperamental.”
For two days after their run-in in the Savoy smoking room, he had avoided Miss Gifford. Dinner had been the only meal that had forced them into the same room at the same time. She would say things about women’s rights to goad him, but he refused to be drawn into the conversation.
He felt that if he started arguing with her, everyone in the room would know he’d kissed her. The incident hadn’t appeared in newspapers, so apparently his Oswald Warts story had worked.
But Sebastian knew. His brother had come to his study the next afternoon, demanding to know what had happened.
“It won’t happen again” was all Nigel had said.
He didn’t know why it had happened. Miss Gifford should be the last woman he wanted to kiss. She drove him mad.
Now she had flown her aeroplane too close to him and sent him falling off his horse onto his arse. So why was his blood thrumming as she reached for him?
Nigel jumped to his feet. He did not want her helping him up. He kept hearing a sound in his head—the droning sound an aeroplane made when it was shot down, just before it crashed.
“The engine had stalled. You could have killed yourself.”
She shrugged. “I got it going again. The trick is to not panic.”
“I saw more men than I can count crash in aeroplanes.” He’d seen the burned, mangled bodies of the pilots hauled by medics to ambulances. Most of them didn’t survive the crash.
She folded her arms over her chest. “And if a man can’t handle an airplane, obviously a woman can’t?”
“Why risk your life by flying, damn it?” His chest was heaving and his hands shook. He was losing control. “You don’t need to die. Millions of men had no choice but to go to war and be blown away. Why in God’s name would you want to die? Most of the beggars I saw at the end would have traded anything to hang on to life.”
She’d gone very white.
Bloody hell. He’d forgotten she had lost her brother. “I apologize, Miss Gifford.” He said it stiffly. If he unbent for a moment—or got too close to her—he feared he would kiss her again.
“I’m sorry I spooked your horse,” she said softly.
They both looked to Beelzebub at the same time. The horse had trotted close to the offending aeroplane and was nibbling grass.
Miss Gifford fell into step with him as he walked toward his horse. “Where are you riding?”
The mere sound of her voice made him hot, uncomfortable. He had no idea why. “I’m doing a tour of the estate. Visiting the tenants.”
“Let them get a glimpse at the grand duke?”
“No, I find out how they are faring, assess repairs that need to be made to their homes. In short, I learn about the problems the tenants are facing, then put in measures to fix them. Though right now, there is very little work that can be done, given our financial state.”
“Don’t you have a secretary or steward who does that for you?”
“Brideswell does have men in both those positions. However, I like to see for myself.”
“Do you? That surprises me.”
“Brideswell is my responsibility, first and foremost. In addition, Beelzebub needs to be ridden.”
“I’d like to go. I rode a mare named Daisy yesterday. Give me a minute, and I’ll get her saddled up and join you. I’d like to see what it’s like to be the tenant of a great house.”
“Probably no different than a manual worker or farmer in America,” he responded drily. “I thought my mother and Grandmama were taking you around for social visits.”
“For the past two days, that’s all I’ve done. I’ve met every peer within shooting distance. I’ve had battles with your grandmother over everything from tea to motorcars to music to the peerage. As to the last, I think it’s useless. Your grandmother thinks the world would collapse without it.” She smiled, and then a concerned look touched her face.
“Your mother is very kind,” she said, “but I can tell she is very sad and in pain over your brother. It’s...awkward.”
“Awkward because the engagement is a farce.”
“I’d rather be honest about it. I think that would be for the best. Even for your mother.”
“No,” he said softly. Dangerously. “It would not.”
“Can I come with you?”
He should say no. But it was not his head thinking when he said, “Yes.”
He watched her walk away to dress for riding with her jaunty, strong stride. She behaved as if the kiss had been of no account. It hadn’t seemed to unsettle her at all.
But as she’d said, kissing meant practically nothing to American girls.
The trouble was that kissing Miss Gifford had meant something to him. And it shouldn’t.
* * *
The clouds she’d flown through earlier were thicker now and a darker gray. Zoe shivered as she trotted Daisy beside the duke and Beelzebub.
Two days ago, the Duke of Langford had saved her life and kissed her senseless. It had all burst into a kind of explosion. Reporters had been swarming; flashbulbs went off. Sebastian had pulled Langford back and punched him. All hell had broken loose after that. People streamed out of Murray’s, hoping to see a brawl.
There hadn’t been one. The duke had not retaliated. She had taken care of a drunken Sebastian, pulling him away. The duke had taken hold of Julia, who was tending to his bleeding nose. Not caring about his injury, the duke had insisted they all spend the night at the Savoy.
Julia had apologized. “Nothing like this has ever happened. Sebastian frustrates Nigel—that’s what he’s always done, but they’ve never hit each other.”
“They did on the first night I arrived.”
Julia had been startled. “Nigel said he got those bruises when he walked into a door in the dark. But they were actually fighting?”
“They were,” Zoe had said. And she’d felt guilt. For ten seconds, and then she’d been angry. She didn’t want them punching each other over her. She was supposed to have a simple arrangement with Sebastian. Why did the men have to have such hot emotions over it?
Why had she kissed Langford back?
She’d never kissed a man who irritated her, who drove her mad, who disapproved of her. She’d never had any need to. There were enough men who had liked her.
“We stop here, Miss Gifford,” Langford said, and he reined in in front of a small cottage. Roses rambled up the walls, covered with tight buds tipped with red and pink.
As Zoe dismounted, the duke came close to her. “Mrs. Billings lives here,” he said. “She lost all four of her sons to the War.”
Zoe put her hand to her mouth. “All her sons, gone?”
Langford nodded. “They were the only family she had. Her husband died during the War, too. His heart gave out.”
She stared at the house. Curtains of grayish-white lace hung in the windows, old but tidy. “How could anyone live through that much pain?”
“I don’t know,” he said simply.
He straightened his coat and smoothed his shirtfront. It surprised her how much Langford tidied himself up before rapping on the door to the humble cottage. Zoe expected to meet a grieving woman, seated despondently in a chair, surrounded by cobwebs. Instead a plump woman with gray hair and a round, flushed face saw them and dropped into a curtsy. “Yer Grace, how honored I am to have ye visit. I’ll put the kettle on.”
Langford dipped his head to step through the low door. “I don’t want to trouble you, Mrs. Billings.”
“’Tis no trouble at all, Yer Grace. Won’t you have a seat in the parlor? I’ve barn cakes, fresh today. I remembered this was the day of the month ye usually stop by,” she said with a fond smile.
“Then I am a fortunate man.”
Langford looked truly anticipatory, delighted to get what must be a treat. When he could have anything he wanted made by the cook at Brideswell. The cottage was filled with heat and steam. Zoe stepped in, too, and Langford introduced her. As Sebastian’s fiancée, which startled her. She didn’t know why—that was what she was. The woman beamed but kept staring at Zoe’s trousers until she bustled out of the room to her tiny kitchen.
As Mrs. Billings made tea, Zoe walked around the parlor. It was a quaint room with a stone hearth, a low-timbered ceiling, simple furniture. What looked out of place were four photographs in silver frames. They were images of four young, handsome men. Zoe picked one up.
“Photographs were taken of all men before they left for the Front. A woman like Mrs. Billings would have had no record of her lads otherwise. I ensured they were framed for her.”
“That was...very good of you.” It was clear that the poor woman couldn’t have afforded a photograph and frame.
A yellowed paper sat on the mantel beneath the first photograph. Zoe unfolded it and the words leaped up at her. It was an army form, with the information filled in by pen. The soldier’s name, number, rank. Then the cold words: The report is to the effect that he was killed in action. There were words of regret and a message of sympathy from Their Gracious Majesties the King and Queen.
She couldn’t swallow. Her throat was too tight. They had received a letter for Billy. Mother kept it tucked in with Billy’s picture in a locket that she never wore, but had instead wrapped in a lace handkerchief. Zoe knew Mother took it out, sometimes at night, clasped it to her heart and cried.
War gave you the knowledge that every good thing in life—beauty, fun, security, pleasures, love—could be gone. So you had to dance harder, drive faster, pack everything in.
Beneath her leather jacket, Zoe felt hot and was perspiring. “It’s steamy in here.”
Langford turned—he was standing at the window, far from her. His blue eyes looked somber. “With her boys gone, she takes in laundry to earn money.”
She stared at him. “She is forced to take in laundry?” Zoe left the room and went to the kitchen doorway where the most heat billowed out. Mrs. Billings had her back to her, arranging cakes on a plate. Steel tubs sat everywhere, filled with sudsy water.
Zoe hurried back to the living room to confront Langford. “How can you let her do manual labor after she has sacrificed her sons for this country? Surely you could help Mrs. Billings. A monthly amount or something invested—”
“Give me money? Why would His Grace do that?” Carrying in a simple tea tray, Mrs. Billings looked mortified. “My laundry provides for me. I won’t take charity.”
“But you should not have to work your fingers to the bone,” Zoe protested.
But Mrs. Billings was adamant.
“It’s not charity to take money to help you because you sacrificed the men who would help you run your household.” Zoe hesitated, realizing that some landowners would have evicted Mrs. Billings. Langford hadn’t.
“Well, I won’t accept it. Though—” The woman’s small blue eyes twinkled. “I do find piles of logs on me doorstep some mornings. No idea where they come from. And baskets of food.”
“Wood is needed for the fires for your laundry,” Nigel said gently.
“Aye, and a little fairy sees fit to leave some for me. And me rent was lowered.”
Zoe understood. Langford wanted to do something for Mrs. Billings—he’d kept her rent low, provided her firewood and food. She sensed he wanted to do more. But Mrs. Billings had pride and was too stubborn to bend and accept anything more.
The Duke of Langford might be old-fashioned, autocratic and irritating, but looking at him with Mrs. Billings, Zoe could see that he was a good man.
