The Straight-Laced Duke Selbourne Page 10

  He would have occupied himself in turning his favorite paperweight over and over in his hands, but Aunt Gwendolyn’s larceny had saved him from that bit of fidgeting.

  Still, something else was wrong. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something else was wrong. Out of place. Or missing.

  Missing? He jerked his hands away from the desktop as if the surface had turned into a hot stove. He pulled open the center drawer of the desk and began a careful search that soon evolved into a frantic shuffling of papers.

  Missing. It was missing. It had been written out, sanded, and left lying on the desk. Right here. On the desk. On this desk. And now it was missing.

  “Blast Lorrie and his harebrained ideas!” the duke exclaimed, opening and closing the remaining drawers, knowing it was an exercise in futility. The list was gone.

  “Aunt Gwendolyn,” the duke growled just as there was a rather cheerful, loud rapping at the study door, and Sophie Winstead entered, as ordered. Bramwell quickly pulled his chair and himself forward to reassume his practiced pose, then just as rapidly shoved himself back from the desk again as he shot to his feet, remembering—only fleetingly—that he was a gentleman. “I said seven o’clock, Miss Winstead. You’re early,” he said accusingly as Sophie took up a chair directly in front of the desk, allowing her skirts to billow and fall where they might as she broke into a sunny smile.

  “I am? I hadn’t thought so, Your Grace.” She laid her hands on the arms of the chair, obviously preparing to rise. “I could go out and come back, yes?”

  The small clock on the desktop began chiming out the hour, striking seven times as Sophie breathed a small “Ah,” then folded her hands in her lap and continued to smile. Innocent. Happy in her innocence. Not reproachful at all in the face of his accusation, his clumsy, bumbling incivility—making him feel ten times the fool he already knew himself to be.

  It wasn’t fair, that’s what it wasn’t. Even the clocks had turned on him.

  And look at her. Dressed all in China blue silk, a wide fall of ivory lace foaming along the neckline of her modestly-cut bodice, a triple-strand choker of perfect ivory pearls accenting her long, slender throat, disappearing beneath her artlessly tumbling curls that were so out of fashion. Or they would be, until she entered Society, at which time every lady’s maid in Mayfair would be wielding hot curling sticks under the direction of a small battalion of frantic, clucking mamas.

  Her gown wasn’t the usual debutante’s gown, although it was not so old-fashioned or so obvious or so outré as to cause her to be shunned. It was simply different, as all of Sophie’s ensembles were different. A little “more” here, a little “less” there. The richest fabrics, the finest laces, the most clever arrangement of bows and ribbons.

  Her jewels were also her own. Pearls were, of course, one of the few acceptable means of adornment for a debutante, and Sophie was wearing pearls. Only, on her, they looked like precious diamonds. How did she do that? How did she do any of what she was doing? How did she always manage to look like she was standing in a benevolent shower of sunlight, casting everything and everybody around her into the shade?

  She was so different. So curiously unique. So completely Sophie.

  Bramwell felt a sudden, insane urge to flee for his life.

  He took refuge in anger instead—and he’d had ample time to build up a goodly store of it since they had last spoken that morning in the Park. Indeed, he’d already summoned up enough anger to construct a concealing wall between his conscience and his reprehensible behavior of the previous evening. Why, in another day or so, he’d probably find a way of convincing himself that kissing Sophie Winstead had been all her fault. Especially when he considered that she was acting as if that kiss had meant nothing, less than nothing... as if dukes kissed her all the time, and the exercise had been just too boring to speak about.

  Which, of course, a small, hopeful voice inside him prompted, didn’t explain the brandy stain on the wall....

  He remained standing and looked down his aristocratic nose at her. “I asked you here this evening to discuss your behavior this morning in the Park, Miss Winstead. It was, as you must know, reprehensible.”

  “I shouldn’t have left the landau, yes? I shouldn’t have sat on the grass? I shouldn’t have picked the buttercups?”

  Oh, he could murder the chit. Cheerfully. “You know what I’m talking about, Sophie!” he exclaimed before he could think. Then he all but fell into his chair, wondering if a few more days of Sophie Winstead in his house would send him all the way around the bend. He certainly had lost half his wits already, and she’d only been in Portland Square for two days and one night. Had he just so slipped as to have addressed her as Sophie? Yes, he had.

  She nodded her head, smiling. “Ah, I think I know what it is. It’s what I said to Sir Wallace, isn’t it?” She tipped her head to one side, so that her curls tickled at her throat, slid forward slightly over one perfect cheek. “I’m sorry. I simply couldn’t help myself, seeing as I’d fairly well decided what was troubling him. All that cherry brandy, Your Grace—it can’t be good for one’s spleen, yes?”

  “He could have sent them on an edifying visit to Italy!” Bramwell exploded. “A leisurely tour of the Lake District would have gotten the pair of old biddies out from underfoot for a time. Or he could have done any of the other things I’ve suggested over the years, beginning with straightening his spine and simply moving out, setting up his own household.”

  “But he didn’t, did he? Listen to you, that is,” Sophie pointed out reasonably, leaning forward to slant the silver inkwell a fraction, making the entire desktop look—how did she do that?—much more attractive, less rigidly proper. She then pulled the top from the humidor and took a deep breath of the aroma of fine cigar tobacco. “Would you care for one, Your Grace? I would very much enjoy watching you smoke.”

  “You all but told Sir Wallace to pimp for his mother and aunt,” Bramwell persisted, but with waning anger, for he’d already realized that Sophie Winstead had no real notion of what she had done. Or, if she did, that she cared a jot for any of it. She had made Wally happy. It could only be considered a stroke of the greatest good fortune that she hadn’t decided that killing the two oppressive old ladies and burying their bodies in the Park at midnight would serve to make Wally even happier.

  “That sounds like such a nasty word, Your Grace, even if I don’t fully know its meaning. I really don’t think you should use it, yes?” Sophie drew out a single cigar and passed it just beneath her nose, drawing in more of the aroma. A look of near ecstasy flitted across her features before she offered the cigar to him. “Would you like me to light it for you? I used to clip off the end for Uncle Cesse, then light it for him. He taught me how to do it just right, I promise. I won’t bungle it.”

  Bram gave up the fight. He took the cigar. He watched as Sophie located the small kit containing the cigar scissors and sulfur-tipped matches. After she’d snipped off the end, he stuck the cigar between his teeth before she could offer to do that for him as well, and puffed until the end was glowing, then followed Sophie with his eyes as she returned to her chair.

  She looked pleased. Pleased with him, pleased with herself, pleased to be alive. Not at all deceitful, or as if she had done anything that was the least artificial, the least out of the ordinary or against her own best wishes. He doubted she ever did anything she didn’t truly want to do. She had lit his cigar because she liked lighting a man’s cigar. She liked the aroma of a good cigar. She liked watching a man smoke. It made her—happy.

  “Thank you,” Bram said as the tobacco mellowed him slightly, took away the sharp edges that had been sticking inside his brain, inside his gut. “What do you plan for Lord Lorimar?” he heard himself ask. “I would only consider it a kindness if you’ll agree to warn me.”

  “Lord Lorimar?” Sophie repeated, her nose crinkling up most delightfully, so that Bramwell found himself looking away, gazing toward the window and the growing dusk
outside. “Why, nothing, Your Grace. He seems a very pleasant man, and more than marginally pleased with himself.”

  “Cocky as a rooster clearing his gullet a minute before dawn,” Bramwell agreed, feeling the corners of his mouth turning up in a smile around the cigar still stuck in his teeth. Sophie was nothing if not astute. He pulled open a drawer, extracted a crystal glass dish, and laid the cigar in it before pushing back his chair and rising to his feet. The cigar would extinguish itself, and he could smoke the rest of it later.

  Walking around to the front of the desk as Sophie also stood up, he perched himself on the edge and smiled at her. She returned his smile, then reached past him, the side of her breast brushing up against his sleeve as she laid the spent matchstick beside the still-smoking cigar.

  Bramwell’s brain became clogged with her sweet perfume, with the unexpected nearness of her, her total unawareness of what he was thinking. Heaven help him—what he was thinking! He swallowed down hard over the sudden lump in his throat.

  “I don’t profess to understand you today any more than I did yesterday, Miss Winstead,” he said, gazing down at the top of her head—she was such a tiny thing, for all her seeming voluptuousness. “But I’m beginning to think you might be more harmless than I at first thought.”

  “Oh, I’m entirely harmless, Your Grace. But this is wonderful, to hear you say so. Then you are beginning to like me, yes?”

  Bramwell didn’t know what to say. Telling this wide-eyed, winsome, amenable Sophie Winstead he didn’t like her would be like beating a puppy for bringing him his slippers. One moment a child, the next a woman, and always a female. Winsome, yes. That was Sophie Winstead. But she was also wanton, wicked, winning, and wonderful. And, Lord, how he wanted her, even as he knew he couldn’t, shouldn’t, even think of such madness. “Yes, Miss Winstead. I’ll admit to it. I am beginning to like you.”

  “Sophie,” she said quietly as she stood back once more.

  His Grace stiffened visibly, a niggle of apprehension taking hold somewhere inside his brain. Forget the perfume, Selbourne, he told himself, and pay attention! Something’s going on here; something you don’t yet understand. A game; a strategy. Something. And none of it benefiting you! So forget the smile, the hair, that luring, bewitching mouth. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said, Sophie. You called me Sophie earlier, Your Grace, when you were scolding me. I rather liked it, even if I was not quite so enamored of the scolding. But, to call me Sophie? It’s so much more friendly, yes?”

  There wasn’t any safe response to that question, so Bramwell didn’t answer. “I’ll be leaving for my club now,” he said, straightening, standing rather rigidly in front of her even as the heady smell of wildflowers and fresh lemon intensified the curious feeling that was growing in his belly. If it grew much more, in fact, he’d have to sit himself back down and not move again until Sophie left the room.

  “Of course,” Sophie said, preceding him to the door, then stopping just at the archway, so that he couldn’t move past her. “I’ll miss you tomorrow, as I already have plans for the day, but you will be going to Almack’s with us tomorrow evening, Your Grace, yes?”

  What? The devil he would. Was that all her game had been; all this business of lighting his cigar and the rest? Had it all been done in the hope of luring him to Almack’s tomorrow evening? Silly girl. As if there were any way to get him to set foot inside those depressing walls. He relaxed visibly. “No, Sophie,” he answered kindly but firmly, as he would have denied a child’s request to remain downstairs past her bedtime, “I have no intention of attending Almack’s. I never do. My aunt will accompany you and Mrs. Farraday. And Miss Waverley, of course.”

  Sophie pouted, just a little bit, her full bottom lip coming forward only slightly—enough to tease, to madden—to remind him that he had kissed those same sweet lips just twenty-four hours ago. And then, as he had stood there, relaxing, smugly congratulating himself, vowing to himself that the kiss had meant nothing, less than nothing, she applied le coup de grâce.

  “Then you lied just now?” she asked, wide-eyed. “You really don’t like me? Even though you kissed me? I don’t understand; really I don’t. Perhaps if I were to apply to Aunt Gwendolyn for an explanation—tell her how you kissed me?” she ended with a smile that told him she’d won, he’d lost. Game, Set, Match—and he’d barely even known he’d been playing! He’d might as well admit it. He and Almack’s were going to meet tomorrow night, Heaven help them both!

  And not, he also felt sure, merely because of the kiss, the threat of telling his aunt about the kiss. Oh no, Sophie wasn’t that simple. If he’d learned one thing this day, it was that Sophie Winstead was about as “simple” as a Gordian knot.

  “I see no need to involve Lady Gwendolyn in this,” Bramwell said stiffly, wondering where Sophie had the paper Lord Lorimar had written, how she’d gotten hold of it. “I’ve kissed you, I agree. I also agree that you could possibly construe that to mean I might, in some way, at some level, like you. Liking you, I am honor bound to attend Almack’s tomorrow evening, and next week as well. You know that. I know that. Now, can we just get on with it? Will you please say anything else you want to say on the matter now—or are you of a mind to strip my hide a single inch at a time?”

  “Don’t tempt me, Your Grace,” Sophie purred, and he watched, bemused, as she reached into the bodice of her gown. Extracting a piece of paper—the piece of paper—she then unfolded right in front of him.

  Had he actually begun to think Sophie Winstead to be relatively harmless? Had he truly begun to tell himself that he’d been wrong to term her “dangerous”? Did he also believe black-and-white cows routinely somersaulted over the moon?

  Sophie smiled up at him, then began reading. “‘We three, His Grace, the duke of Selbourne, Sir Wallace Merritt, and myself, Baron Marshall Lorimar, cannot, will not, become in any way infatuated with, fall in love with, or even very much like one Miss Sophie Winstead. Infraction is punished by two successive weeks’ attendance at Almack’s, beginning with the next planned Assembly.’”

  “I remember the words, Miss Winstead,” Bramwell said. “I can only wonder how you came to possess something that is my property, something that belongs to me.”

  “Belongs to you, yes—but which concerns me.” She folded the paper once more and replaced it in her bodice. “Giuseppe has one very small failing, Your Grace—beyond chandeliers, of course. He brings me things, and expects a treat in return. He received a very lovely treat this afternoon, as you can imagine. Sir Wallace has already mentioned his intention to attend Almack’s tomorrow night. You can arrive with him, if you like, if you don’t want to be seen entering the Assembly in the company of the Widow Winstead’s daughter.”

  Bramwell stopped himself before he could make a potentially fatal lunge for the incriminating list. “That was all Lorrie’s idea—I mean, Baron Lorimar’s idea.” He winced as Sophie blinked at him, knowing he wasn’t being fair to his friend. There was nothing else for it. Either he cried craven, hid behind Lorrie, or he stood up and behaved like a gentleman. So thinking, he took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and intoned formally, “Be that as it may, we did go along with it. The whole business smacks of the juvenile and the absurd. It is also unfortunate, embarrassing to me, insulting to you, and I hereby apologize for all three of us.”

  “Nonsense!” Sophie countered happily. “I’m enjoying all of this very much, and am not in the least insulted. As I think Bobbit a good sort, I also shall enjoy watching as he amasses his unexpected fortune, if that doesn’t make me sound too much the shameless braggart. And I most certainly look forward to meeting this person, this Sad Samuel Seaton, who must be a relative of yours, yes? Poor fellow, to be so unhappy as he must be to have earned himself that horrible name. I’ll have to make it a point to see him happy, too. Yes, I will most definitely do that. Oh, and one thing more, I think. You, Your Grace, won’t tell Sir Wallace and Baron Lorimar a word of what I know, yes? Beca
use that, Your Grace, would most certainly not be fair.”

  Bramwell hadn’t felt so chastised, or so threatened with dire consequences, since he’d been called in front of the headmaster and read a lecture on the folly of flying a kite into the bell tower when he should have been at vespers—the kite tail having tangled in the bell ropes, thereby putting a very large crimp in the evening’s religious services.

  As he had been caught out then, he had been caught out now. And the only thing left was to take his punishment like a man.

  “I would be honored to be one of your party tomorrow night, madam,” Bramwell said at last, each syllable he uttered cutting at his tongue like shards of sharp glass. “And now, if you’ll excuse me?”

  “I never meant to keep you, Your Grace.” Sophie dropped into a curtsy, then moved to one side, to allow him to depart the room before he was left with only the memory of his former dignity.

  He was inside his coach and on his way to his club before Sophie’s words repeated themselves inside his weary brain. Over and over again. I never meant to keep you, Your Grace. He began to think the coach wheels were singing out the words with every turn over the cobblestones. I never meant to keep you, Your Grace.

  No, she never meant to keep him. Bramwell knew that was true. “She’s been honest enough about that at least, from the very outset. She’s in London to enjoy herself, her mother’s child: to dance, to flirt, to do God knows what with God knows whom. But she doesn’t mean to keep anyone, most certainly of all Uncle Ces-ee’s son,” he said, muttering the words into his cravat as he slumped against the squabs, wondering why this thought cheered him not at all.

  Veni, vidi, vici.

  — Julius Caesar

  Chapter Six

  “Alors! If you are not soon for sitting, I shall never get this right.”

  Sophie leaned to her right once more, trying to catch another glimpse of herself in the long mirror, then backed up until she felt the edge of the dressing-table bench against her legs. She sat down, careful not to crease her gown, and bowed her head so that Desiree could clasp the near-to-waist-long string of perfect pearls around her throat.