The Straight-Laced Duke Selbourne Page 6

  “Oh, yes, Miss Waverley, all my gowns come to me directly from France, as did my mother’s, even during the war, I’m ashamed to say. Desiree—my maid, you understand, and a fine friend as well—well, Desiree and I had such fun taking measurements and the like for the form we then packed up and shipped off to Paris. Now my gowns are made to fit the other me, you see, so that I must be very careful not to gain so much as an ounce, for fear we should have to do all of that measuring again. But that is so much more than you asked, yes? Please forgive me.”

  “That’s quite all right, Miss Winstead,” Isadora said, her blue eyes raking over Sophie’s figure as they sat in the drawing room once more with Aunt Gwendolyn after dinner. The duke had forgone blowing a cloud in manly solitude in order to join them. He had done this not because of any dislike for his own company, Sophie was convinced, but in order to be on hand to step in at any moment, to rescue either of the ladies if she had mischief on her mind. Smart fellow. Of course she had mischief on her mind. Didn’t she always?

  “And I will say it again,” Isadora went on as Sophie beamed at her. “Your gown is quite lovely, if a trifle more French, shall I say, than is popular in town this Season. And quite flattering to your fuller figure.”

  Sophie’s smile remained bright, just as if she were so redbrick stupid as to not know she’d just been the victim of a backhanded insult. Fuller figure, indeed! The woman sitting in front of her was narrow as a whittled stick. There was nothing there for a man to admire, no hint of a comfortable cushion for his head, no hope of soft curves or dimples.

  Sophie felt a clever set-down very naturally climb to her lips, and just as easily fought it down. Why waste time fighting an enemy when it was so much easier to make a friend? She actually felt rather sorry for Miss Isadora Waverley, poor thing, for she probably couldn’t help being such a stick, both physically and in her narrow brain. Besides, with the opening the duke’s fiancée had so nicely given her, she now could put her plan into action.

  Sophie had taken her measure of the oh-so-proper Miss Waverley during dinner, and already knew what it would take to make the self-important young woman happy. Happy enough that she would be no problem, prove to be no impediment to Sophie’s own happiness. And it was all so simple. If Miss Waverley wanted insecure and malleable, Sophie was more than willing to give her insecure and malleable. In spades.

  “La, yes, Miss Waverley,” Sophie trilled. “You are so right. I am not nearly so aristocratically lean as, say, yourself. I am much like my mother, I’m afraid, built along more earthy lines. And inches too short into the bargain. Why, I believe I rise no higher than His Grace’s cravat, yes?” She then frowned, leaning forward to show a measure of her unease, of her uncertainty—of her perfect breasts (after all, His Grace was watching). “But pray tell me I am not entirely out of style. I should so hate to be termed an Antidote, not worthy of any attention, which would reflect badly on my sponsor and dear Aunt Gwendolyn.”

  Isadora set down her teacup before answering and delicately patted at her lips with the serviette that had been reposing in her lap. Only when she had arranged the linen square over her knees once more did she speak, and she did it with the air of authority of one who is reading from stone tablets just carried down the mountainside. “I admit it will be a struggle, my dear Miss Winstead, as you are unfortunately short, and darker hair is more in vogue this year. But, lud, I’m quite sure we will contrive. Certainly there are one or two gentlemen whose interest might be aroused, then cultivated. Isn’t that right, Lady Gwendolyn?”

  “Hrruumph!” that lady replied shortly. “Where are your eyes, Miss Waverley? The chit’s all but perfect, very nearly the eighth great wonder of the world. We’ll be beating eager gentlemen away with sticks, that’s what we’ll be doing.”

  Sophie hid a smile behind her own serviette as the duke choked on his drink, then coughed, then excused himself and made his way to the drinks table, clearly in search of something more bracing than tea. Her smile faded, however, when Isadora responded, “Lud, yes, dear lady, I do know that, although I dislike pointing out the obvious. Miss Winstead will attract all manner of men. But none to suit our purposes, I fear. Not if marriage is the prize we hope to secure.”

  Silly woman. Why was she still fighting the inevitable? Was she that thick? If Sophie were to leap onto Miss Waverley, climb her like the tree she was, and rip loose that neat figure-eight coil of coal black hair that sat so primly at the nape of her neck—would the woman even flinch? And, more importantly, what would such an assault, no matter how justified, serve? It was so much easier to be nice. Sophie considered this, and much more, as she took another sip of tea, looking through her lowered lashes at the duke, to gauge his reaction to his fiancée’s insult.

  “I believe that might have been a bit strong, Isadora,” Bramwell said, seating himself once more, crossing one leg over the other as he balanced a wineglass on his knee.

  Well, now. This was interesting. The duke might not like her overmuch, Sophie decided, might thoroughly detest her, in fact. But he was gentleman enough to defend her. She longed to kiss him, thought about shedding a tear or two to gain even more of his sympathy, then dismissed both possible responses as being much too transparent for the forewarned duke. Besides, he wasn’t her target.

  Still and all, she decided, it was nice of him.

  “No, no,” Sophie protested instead, looking to Bramwell, then to Isadora. “Brutal frankness is just what’s needed here, yes? I was not so sheltered, am not such a sad nodcock, that I’m unaware my mother’s reputation precedes me into any social gathering His Grace might allow me to attend. I’m fully cognizant of the great sacrifice he is undertaking—that all of you are undertaking—in hopes of making my dream to be just another debutante a reality. Just, please, dear Miss Waverley, continue to be frank. I am your willing student, and you shall be my mentor, yes?”

  The duke choked again and put down his glass. Which was probably wise of him, Sophie concluded. Who knew how deeply she’d have to dig, how high her pile of compliments would have to grow, before Miss Waverley was won over.

  “Lud, such a pretty speech, Miss Winstead, and so wisely spoken!” Isadora said, smiling most benevolently, and Sophie mentally laid down her shovel, her job done much more quickly and easily than even she could have imagined. “I am above all things flattered, and grateful that you see the need for guidance. Why, just the way you all but bounded into the room earlier this evening gave me, I must admit, more than a qualm as to how we should ever launch you successfully. I will be more than happy to show you how to go on, Miss Winstead, how to converse with gentlemen, how to walk, how to talk, how to stand. Shall we begin our lessons tomorrow? Selbourne, surely you can bludgeon either Sir Wallace or Baron Lorimar into accompanying us on a morning drive through the park?”

  “Lord Lorimar has already expressed an interest in making Miss Winstead’s acquaintance,” the duke answered—his lips barely moving as he spoke, Sophie noticed. “Shall we say at eleven, Isadora?”

  He looked to Sophie then, glared at her actually, and she smiled back at him as she wriggled very slightly in her seat, content with this night’s work. She gave in to impulse and lifted her hand, just a little, so that only he could see, winked at him, then held up two fingers, just in case he had forgotten to keep count of her conquests.

  “Miss Winstead, I’ve just now remembered something,” he said, abruptly rising to his feet and holding out his arm to her. “I’ve quite forgotten to show you a letter that has arrived for you late this afternoon, forwarded from Wimbledon, I’m sure. It’s from Paris, I believe. Would you care to accompany me now for a moment, please, while I retrieve it from my study?”

  Sophie wrinkled up her nose at him as she smiled. Did he really think she harbored some terrible death wish, that she’d go off with him now, when he was so angry—not that she hadn’t given him good reason? She’d rather walk barefoot over broken glass. “A letter, you say? Probably just another bill, alas, as I�
�m quite the spendthrift. Surely it can wait, Your Grace, thank you just the same. We were all just having a most comfortable coze. Weren’t we, ladies?”

  His jaw was set, making him look quite manly. Appealing, in a strange, definitely to be avoided way. “But I’d really rather you came with me now, just for a few moments,” he said. “Otherwise, I might forget the letter, and it could be lost.”

  “Really, Nephew,” Lady Gwendolyn scolded, “if the gel don’t want to go, she don’t want to go.”

  Sophie smiled demurely at Gwendolyn but the duke kept his arm held out, so that she longed to slap it away with her serviette.

  Isadora clapped her hands together like a schoolmistress calling her students to order. “Now do you see, Lady Gwendolyn? Miss Winstead is proving to us right now that she has no real grasp of proper social behavior.” She turned to Sophie and explained. “My dear, His Grace is your social superior as well as your sponsor while you are here in Town with us. He has very politely asked your accompaniment on a small errand. You, as his inferior as well as his guest, must be amenable to such requests, eager to please, and polite at all times. Isn’t that right, Selbourne?”

  The duke turned and bowed in his betrothed’s direction. “I couldn’t have conveyed that conclusion better myself, my dear lady. Thank you so much for leaping into the breach and saying it for me.”

  Sophie damped down the impulse to roll her eyes in disbelief at both Isadora Waverley’s blind stupidity and His Grace’s veiled sarcasm—which obviously had flown straight over his fiancée’s head. Instead, she merely got to her feet, took Bramwell’s arm, and left the room with all the cheer one might show walking the plank.

  “We’ll have to work on that,” Sophie heard Isadora informing Lady Gwendolyn consideringly as the duke’s long strides had her all but skipping along beside him in order to keep up. “From sunny to sullen in a heartbeat, my lady. Lud, that’s so like young girls today, poor thing! But she’ll learn. I have every confidence in my own abilities—oh, and in yours as well, of course.”

  Once they were out of the drawing room and headed down the stairs to his grace’s ground-floor study, Sophie looked up at the duke, saying, “That was very neat, Your Grace.”

  “Hardly. But effective enough, for all it was clumsy.”

  “I meant your veiled insult to Miss Waverley, not the cowhanded way you all but ordered me out of the room,” she pointed out, made slightly breathless by trying to match his pace on the stairs. “Tell me, please. How uncomfortable is it, being led around by the nose?”

  “If that question means that you’ve belatedly become concerned for my poor, gullible aunt, I suggest you ask her yourself. And Miss Waverley as well, now that you’ve got her believing you’re nothing more than a brainless ninny eager to sit at her feet and drink in all her great knowledge.”

  He stopped for a moment at the bottom of the stairs and glared down at her. He was really quite good at glaring, as if he’d had considerable practice. And there were those interesting lines around the outside corners of his eyes, crinkles as it were, as if he’d spent a lot of time squinting into the sun. Hadn’t Uncle Cesse said something about his only son trying to disgrace him by going off to the Royal Navy? Yes, that was it. Bramwell Seaton had spent years looking out over the ocean, his eyes on distant horizons. Strange how he couldn’t see clearly now.

  Sophie deliberately teased him again as they turned toward the back of the house, pouting as best she could as she skipped along beside him. “You’re really quite angry, aren’t you?” she asked, knowing she was only pointing out the obvious. “But it’s not to worry. I doubt Miss Waverley has the slightest idea that yours was only a hastily made-up fib meant to get me alone with you. And I find it all quite flattering, if unnecessary. After all, we’re living under the same roof. Getting me alone, day or night—anytime at all—could hardly be more convenient, yes?”

  He put his hand at the small of her back and all but pushed her into the study ahead of him before closing the door on the hallway and the interested footmen milling about in the foyer. “I did not want to get you alone, as you term it, for any romantic notion you might have taken into your head.”

  Sophie spied out a decanter of brandy warming on a small table near the fire and went straight to it, pouring His Grace a snifter and returning to hand it to him. “Why, did I say anything about romantic notions, Your Grace?” she asked, smiling up at him as she insinuated herself between Bramwell and the desk. “No, I’m quite sure I didn’t. I’d rather assumed you’d brought me down here to read my incorrigible self a stern lecture, yes?”

  He took the drink from her without so much as a word of thanks, brought it almost to his lips, then leaned forward and slammed the snifter down on the desk, its contents untouched. “Oh, no, you don’t! You’re not going to do that again.”

  “Do what again, Your Grace?” Sophie asked, bracing her palms against the desktop and gracefully lifting herself onto the surface so that her slippered feet swung freely, only the faintest glimpse of well-turned ankle visible below her hemline. “I’m sure I haven’t the faintest notion what you’re talking about.” She turned her head, inspecting the wide, clean expanse of desk, then looked up at him again, her expression one of absolute innocence and confused inquiry. “I don’t seem to see my letter here.”

  Bramwell made a growling sound low in his throat as he ran a hand through his warm brown locks, effecting great inroads on its sleekly combed style and making himself look much younger, much more approachable. Not, she was sure, that he knew it or, if he did, that he would ever do such a thing again. She couldn’t remember when last she’d seen such an unhappy man—or a man so woefully unaware of his unhappiness.

  “You’re enough to drive a man out of his mind,” he said at last. “You do know that, don’t you? And why am I even asking? Of course you know that. You do it on purpose. You do everything on purpose. You don’t make a single move, a single gesture, without a purpose. You wheedled yourself into my aunt’s good graces with woebegone expressions, some lip rouge, and promises of lurid gossip. And then you turned yourself around and played the eager, feather-headed ninny so that my fiancée sees you as no more dangerous than a lump of clay that she, in her goodness, will mold into her own image—as if that were possible.”

  “You’re absolutely right, Your Grace. Of course I did—I do! And you’ve seen through it all. Even the lip rouge.” Sophie sighed and shook her head. “But, all that being said, I don’t see why you’re flying so into the treetops. It isn’t as if I didn’t warn you, yes? I was raised to please, raised to see a need, then accommodate it—until it has become second nature for me. I simply can’t help myself. I warned you of that as well. Besides, it’s much nicer all round when people like you, yes? You’re happier, the people around you are happier.” She spread her arms wide. “The whole world is happier.”

  He raised his own arms from his sides, then brought his hands close together in front of him, as if trying to hold on to something he could not quite see, found impossible to completely grasp. “But—but that isn’t honest.”

  Now Sophie did roll her eyes, beginning to feel the first flush of what Desiree had once called her “fire-flash” of anger. She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, hoping to remain calm, in control. “Honest? What isn’t honest, Your Grace? I very honestly enjoy both the ladies who are sitting upstairs in the drawing room, planning ways to make me a success. Truly I do. Lady Gwendolyn is happy to have a companion, someone to laugh with, to make her feel young again. Miss Waverley is happy to have found a project that will elevate her already fine opinion of herself and further ingratiate her into your affections. In their own way, they’re both quite delicious. I do no harm, Your Grace. I just see what is needed, and I do it; find a lack, and fill it. Which makes it easier for me to be happy, for my life to be easier. Does sincerity—or honesty, as you call it—matter all that much, when everyone is happy? And that’s why we’re here, isn’t it, Your Grace? To be hap
py? Certainly we aren’t here to be sad.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, raised his hands as if to gesture once more—and ended by saying nothing, doing nothing. He just stood there, staring at her for a very long time, his expression growing increasingly solemn. “You don’t like your fellow creatures very much, do you, Miss Winstead,” he pronounced at last.

  “What nonsense!” Sophie hopped down from her perch, avoiding the duke’s eyes. “It’s a good thing you didn’t drink that brandy, Your Grace. You’re already two parts drunk for you to think such a thing of me. Now we’d best go back to the drawing room, or else they’ll send someone after us,” she said, trying to brush past him and out the door before she exploded in rage and ruined everything she and Desiree had planned for so long.

  But he grabbed her arm just above the elbow and almost roughly turned her around to face him. She was close enough now to feel his warm breath on her cheek. Confusion covered her anger, then the anger fought through once more. She attempted to move away, to protect herself from an enemy she could not recognize, because the enemy seemed to be inside her, a just-discovered part of her that was in danger of betraying her in some unknown way.

  “Now where have all your smiles so suddenly disappeared to, do you suppose? Your playful winks, your practiced shrugs? Your impossible-to-control wiles meant to drive a man out of his mind? What’s the matter, Miss Sophie Winstead? Have I stumbled onto the truth all that easily? Is it true? Do you really hate us, hate all of us men in particular?”

  Sophie took another moment to compose herself, to remember who she was, how she was raised, what she had observed, the lessons she had learned. And she decided to be honest with His Grace—just this one more time—so that she wouldn’t have to be honest again. She refused to listen to the small, niggling voice that whispered that she had not really chosen to do anything, that she had no choice, that the duke had left her no other choice.