The Straight-Laced Duke Selbourne Page 5

  Lady Gwendolyn rolled her eyes heavenward. “Julia seeing her husband roll into town with a bare-breasted Constance beside him? Yes, my dear, I most certainly can imagine it. Never met a woman so full of starch as Lady Upchurch, or one more deserving of any comeuppance, as it were. Next time I see her, all regal and condescending in her plumes and purple, why I imagine I shall secretly simply dissolve in mirth.”

  Sophie leaned her cheek comfortably against Lady Gwendolyn’s knee, happy to forget her short, sharp flare of hastily concealed anger at the duke of Selbourne for behaving so badly a few moments ago, and over so silly a thing as a harmlessly mischievous Giuseppe. The man really wasn’t worth such an exertion of emotion on her part, she decided, although he certainly was handsome. Why, even when angry and frustrated, he was quite the most handsome man she’d ever seen. “Yes, my lady. We will have fun, won’t we?” she said, sighing as a strange, new contentment floated through her body, mingled with an even stranger excitement. “And isn’t that what life is all about?”

  A young Woman her name was Dull.

  — John Bunyan

  Chapter Three

  Nephew, be warned. I expect considerably more civil behavior from you at table this evening.

  Bramwell crushed the unsigned note in his fist and threw it into the drawing-room fireplace, but not before noticing that his aunt had made use of his own personal stationery to pen her warning. Considering that he kept this stationery in a locked desk drawer in his study, he spared a moment to wonder if his favorite paperweight, a Spanish doubloon encased in a sphere of glass, remained where he’d seen it that morning.

  But that wasn’t really important.

  Had he actually risen this morning believing that Sophie Winstead could come into his house, and that his life would remain unchanged, the hard-won calm tenor of his days undisturbed? No. Certainly not. Otherwise, why would he have spent the previous evening sulking in that same private study, downing more than his usually quite prudent ration of brandy?

  He had known there could be problems—would be problems connected with having Constance Winstead’s daughter under his roof. But he certainly had not counted on also housing a profane parrot or a chandelier-swinging monkey. He really should have put his foot down about that, said the animals had to go. There was a reason why he hadn’t, he was quite sure of that. He just didn’t know what it was.

  Bramwell also had not counted on the girl being so blatantly conniving, so frank with her conclusion that she was about to set London on its head.

  He most certainly of all had not counted on the girl being so damnably beautiful.

  And to warn him not to believe himself to be falling in love with her? What cheek! As if he would ever be so foolish as his father, who had spent nearly the last four years of his life running amuck through a second childhood that had been the talk of the ton.

  Oh no. He was not his father. He, Bramwell Seaton, Ninth Duke of Selbourne, wasn’t anything like his father. He was sober. Mature. Levelheaded. Well grounded.

  Betrothed.

  He downed the last of his Madeira, wincing slightly as he thought of Miss Isadora Waverley and the evening that stretched—opened wide like a pit, actually—in front of him. Isadora had been so kind, so understanding, so serene and unruffled, as was her custom. Sophie Winstead was to be their shared project, her successful launch the removal of the only impediment standing between them and a June wedding.

  But Isadora had confidently spoken of shopping trips to Bond Street, lessons in deportment given to a docile, faintly backward little country miss, a few small social gatherings, perhaps a visit or two to the theater, followed by marriage to some half-pay officer and a swift removal back to the country. Or to America, if it could be arranged. That would be very nice, very nice, indeed.

  Bramwell could no longer even fantasize that hopeful scenario unfolding before his still shocked eyes. He’d have more reason to suppose his Aunt Gwendolyn might take it into her head to dance on a table at Carlton House for the amusement and edification of their new King and his aging cronies.

  If only Sophie weren’t so annoyingly beautiful. He could no more hide her in a crowd of simpering debutantes at Almack’s than he could hope the world would overlook a peacock in a cage of wrens.

  Because Sophie Winstead was full of color, brilliant with life. She shone. She glowed. She dazzled.

  What he most resented, the duke decided for the third time in as many minutes, pouring himself an unusual second glass of Madeira, was that she had warned him of her irresistible charms, telling him that she was terribly sorry, but she had no control over them. She had warned him that everyone found her lovable—just as if it were a foregone conclusion that he would soon be drooling at her shoe tops, begging for her favor.

  “The Devil I will.” the duke declared out loud, jamming the stopper back into the decanter and picking up his glass.

  “Miss Isadora Waverley, Your Grace,” Bobbit announced from the doorway. The duke put down his Madeira untouched and turned to see his betrothed sweep past the butler. Her abigail was probably already on her way to the servant’s parlor, to sit prim and proper, waiting for her summons to accompany her mistress back to Mount Street.

  Isadora held her gloved arms out to Bramwell as he moved to welcome her as a shipwrecked man greets rescue, taking her hands in his and lifting one of them to within an inch of his lips. When she spoke, it was with the very proper, rather clipped accents favored by the most stringently proper of the ton. “My dear Selbourne, how goes the evening? Has your little charge arrived as yet? I do so long to make her acquaintance, certain that we shall be the very best of good friends during her sojourn here in Mayfair.”

  The duke closed his eyes for a moment, gratified by the serenity Isadora radiated, some of his admittedly foolish fears calmed by her cool presence, her even demeanor, her practical outlook. She had all the makings of a perfect duchess. Tall, graceful, she held her chin high above her long neck and wore her black-as-night hair simply yet elegantly drawn back from her face. Her blue eyes were cool, controlled, her gown of the first stare, eminently elegant, not in the least overdone.

  There was nothing flamboyant about Isadora Waverley. Nothing to cause unwanted attention. She was admired by all, perhaps envied by some, but there was no whiff of scandal about her. No whispers followed after her, no one had a bad word to say of her—or a bawdy joke to tell about her.

  She was nearly three and twenty, past the age of silliness, but never considered to be on the shelf. Her contemplated marriage to Lord Coulbeg had sadly ended with His Lordship’s demise in a hunting accident, and she had only come out of black gloves the previous Season. With the beauty, the breeding, the parental wealth, and the good sense to pick and choose where she gave her hand, Isadora had returned to the London scene as one of its brightest if not its most original lights. Bramwell knew himself to be one very fortunate man in that she had chosen him from among so many, that she had seen what he had seen—that she would make a most admirable duchess.

  “Good evening, my dear,” he said now, “so good of you to ask. I’m loath to tell you this, but Miss Winstead’s arrival has, unfortunately, not been without incident.” Bramwell led Isadora to a satin-striped sofa and sat down beside her once she had arranged her skirts. She sat as regally as she stood, with her spine ramrod straight, her hands neatly folded in her lap as she slowly turned her head and looked into his eyes.

  “There are complications?” she asked, not quite frowning, not quite smiling. “Lud! Nothing that can’t be overcome, I’m sure.”

  Bramwell visualized Sophie Winstead as he had last seen her as he’d passed by his aunt’s open doorway on his way downstairs. The two of them had been giggling like children as Sophie held out her skirts and pirouetted in front of his delighted aunt, showing off her gown for the evening as his aunt’s maid, Peggy, had clapped her hands in approval.

  “My aunt has kindly seen fit to take Miss Winstead in hand,” he hedged, wonderi
ng if he had always harbored this heretofore unnoticed knack for twisting the truth to suit his hopes.

  “That’s good, then,” Isadora pronounced, nodding her head a single time. “Lady Gwendolyn is unimpeachable. Lud, the child could do worse than to emulate her.”

  While the unimpeachable Lady Gwendolyn pilfers her host’s snuffboxes? Oh, yes, Bramwell thought fatalistically, that could only be a help.

  “Papa has written that he hopes he’ll be coming to town in time to watch the Season wind down with us,” he heard Isadora say, obviously believing the matter of Sophie Winstead settled. “He regrets that his gout has kept him confined to the estate, but promises he shall be up to walking me down the aisle. Isn’t that sweet of him?”

  “Your father is too kind,” Bramwell answered politely and automatically. This was a role he knew, a role he slipped into easily and played well, that of the urbane gentleman carrying on a safe, polite conversation with the woman he had chosen as his hostess, his wife, the mother of his correct, upright, and unexceptional children. He was playing a role? Did the whole world play at life, rather than just live it?

  And how, why, had that notion suddenly popped into his head?

  “Yes, he is,” Isadora agreed. “I immediately posted back to him, assuring him that we had no objection to postponing the nuptials until the fall if his health should not prove robust. You agree, of course.”

  “Of course,” Bramwell assured her. June. In the autumn. Next spring. It didn’t matter. There was, after all, no great rush. “Your father’s health must be our first consideration. Would you care for a glass of ratafia, my dear?” he then asked after finding himself shocked onto his feet by the sudden realization that he didn’t give a tinker’s dam if the marriage was delayed another six months.

  He crossed to the drinks table, his hand trembling ever so slightly as he pulled the stopper from a crystal decanter and poured Isadora’s ratafia. Shouldn’t he be outraged at this possible delay? Shouldn’t he be panting to wed his betrothed? Panting to bed her? No! No, he shouldn’t be. He was a gentleman. A sober, refined, upstanding gentleman. A duke. Not a randy goat who all but ran stark, staring naked through his hostess’s guest bedchambers and dived headfirst off the balcony.

  “Lud, but I so admire your consideration, Selbourne,” Isadora told him as she accepted the glass. “It is your good-heartedness and consideration that first drew me to you. That, and your calm, even ways and lack of heated passions. I so dislike any hint of upheaval, of discord. And, which follows most naturally, I abhor even the faintest whiff of scandal, your late father’s indiscretion to one side and thankfully forgotten, naturally. One cannot be held entirely responsible for another’s foolhardiness, now can one? Especially once that other person is most blessedly deceased. But, la, if your father were still alive? Well, I daresay I would not be here now. You do understand, don’t you? Oh, of course you do. As I’ve said, dearest Selbourne, you’re so eminently reasonable.”

  “Thank you, Isadora,” he said, doing his best not to flinch under her compliments, all of which made him sound the most dashed dull fellow in Nature. He hadn’t always been so sober, he recalled with a slight straightening of his own shoulders. He’d cut quite a dash while in the Royal Navy, narrowly escaped more than a few scandalous but quite satisfying skirmishes, and all with the odd romantic peccadillo thrown in for good measure. But that, of course, was all before his father’s inglorious and very public demise. “I do my best to bring only honor to the family name and station.”

  The dinner gong sounded again just at that moment and Bramwell was saved from a further detailing of himself as an utter bore and stodgy stick in the mud. And if something deep inside of him rebelled at being thought of as a man who would not defend his own dead father? Well, he’d think about that later. He had a lot to think about later...

  As the gong died, his Aunt Gwendolyn appeared in the doorway to the drawing room, her smile wide and beaming as she tripped toward the sofa, a greeting to Isadora already dribbling from her lips.

  Her faintly painted lips.

  “Aunt Gwendolyn?” Bramwell inquired, as if not quite sure he knew this woman who had somehow left off her turban this evening, showing her graying curls to the world. Yes, her lips were rather pink, as were her cheeks. Not unnaturally so, but just enough for him to notice. And where had he seen that highly colorful paisley shawl before? Surely it wasn’t the same one he’d last glimpsed draped over a gilded parrot cage?

  The lady sat herself down beside Isadora, patted at her graying curls, and smiled up at her nephew. “Yes, Bramwell? Oh—you’re probably wondering where dear Sophie is that she’s not with me. She’ll be along in a moment. Giuseppe was being naughty and hid one of her ear-bobs under my bed and—last I saw her—the dear girl was down on her hands and knees, attempting to locate the thing. I told her Peggy could do it, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Her monkey, she said, her mess. Such a lovely girl. Just grand. Good evening, Miss Waverley. You look very nice, as usual. Fine night, isn’t it?”

  “Exceptionally fine, my lady,” Isadora answered, looking to Bramwell, who could do nothing more than shrug his shoulders, for he certainly had no explanation for his aunt’s faintly bizarre, if rather attractive appearance, or her ramblings about Sophie Winstead, an earbob, and monkeys. “Congratulations are in order, or so Selbourne tells me.”

  Lady Gwendolyn frowned. “Congratulations? Whatever for? Have I done something wonderful? I have no recollection of it, in any case.”

  “Lud, why, for taking Miss Winstead in hand, my lady, of course,” Isadora explained, patting Lady Gwendolyn’s knee as if to assure her that it was all right, one did understand the mental lapses of the elderly. “Although you must feel nothing but antipathy for anyone even vaguely connected with the Winstead name, you are generous enough, charitable enough, not to blame the child for the sins of the mother.”

  Bramwell busied himself in inspecting the cuff of his jacket, thus avoiding his aunt’s flashing eyes. He certainly wasn’t about to remind Lady Gwendolyn that she had, in fact, been more than ready to condemn Sophie—before she had fallen under the dratted girl’s spell, that is.

  “Stuff and nonsense!” Lady Gwendolyn declared heatedly, proving that Bramwell had been correct, and his aunt had already conveniently forgotten her earlier reluctance to sponsor her brother’s mistress’s daughter. “I should be poor-spirited indeed to lay any of the blame for that horrible interlude at the door of such a sweet, loving, innocent child as our own dear Sophie.”

  “Innocent? I should certainly hope so, Aunt,” Bramwell broke in reasonably, unable to resist a sudden impulse to make his aunt as uncomfortable as he was himself. “But you must remember, we scarcely know the girl.”

  Lady Gwendolyn straightened her spine, indignation in every line of her body. “Are you suggesting, Nephew, that your aunt is too old, or too—blockheaded, to be able to see what’s directly in front of her own nose? I’ve met the girl. I’ve spoken with her. And I approve of her most thoroughly. Besides,” she ended quietly, adjusting the folds of her colorful shawl, “she tells the most delicious stories.”

  Knowing his aunt to be a dedicated lover of gossip, Bramwell only nodded, certain that the enterprising Miss Winstead had quickly taken the old lady’s measure that afternoon. Then, as is the way of conniving women, she had honed in on her most vulnerable weakness—and waltzed straight into his aunt’s sympathy.

  In short, Sophie Winstead had dazzled his aunt. Dazzled her into liking her, accepting her, becoming not only her friend but her ally. They had most probably spent the afternoon giggling, and sharing secrets, and brushing each other’s hair, and doing all sort of mysterious things to their faces and nails that women do that confound a man. And what purpose did the girl have for such a dedicated assault on his aunt’s tenderhearted emotions? Heaven only knew. Heaven, and Sophie Winstead.

  Bramwell longed to wring the girl’s neck. That lovely, lovely, bound to be glorious to touch neck. He closed h
is eyes and gritted his teeth, mentally slapping himself back to his usual sanity.

  “Good evening, all!” came the faintly breathless greeting as the young woman he wanted to throttle floated into the room. Her smile was wide, her countenance open, her eyes shining as brightly as new copper pennies, her curls flying away from her face as if she were lightheartedly running into a soft, fragrant summer breeze. Indeed, the heady smells of summer drifted into the room with her, as well as thoughts of the innocence of a carefree youth long gone and sadly lamented. “I’m late in coming down, yes? Oh, of course I am. How terribly rude of me. Please, I beg your forgiveness.”

  She stopped in front of Bramwell and dropped into a low curtsy, her head held high so that, looking down at her, the duke found himself staring at her modestly exposed breasts rising above the demure yet somehow daring cut of her ivory-silk gown.

  Bramwell felt suddenly light-headed, his balance shaky, and only Sophie’s delighted grin brought him back to his senses. Dazzling, he reminded himself. She is being purposely dazzling, damn her eyes. And damn mine as well, for looking.

  “And you must be Miss Waverley, yes?” Sophie said, turning to Isadora and dropping another curtsy, not quite so low, but equally as graceful and deferential as her first. “Aunt Gwendolyn has told me about you—everything lovely, to be sure. I’m Sophie. How very pleased and honored I am to make your acquaintance.”

  Aunt Gwendolyn? Bramwell turned on his heels and went to rescue his glass of Madeira, which he had forgotten on the drinks table, leaving behind his fiancée, his traitorous, gullible aunt, and that Devil’s spawn, Sophie Winstead.

  If he could, he would have quit the room as well, left the city, left the country, departed the hemisphere. Because, as sure as rain fell when one was first wearing a new hat, Sophie, with one conquest already under her belt, was about to set out to dazzle his levelheaded Isadora, and he really didn’t think he wanted to watch.