The Straight-Laced Duke Selbourne Read online

  But what else was he supposed to think of a woman who had the body of a courtesan, the face of an angel, the deviousness of a court intriguer, and the most infuriating, chameleon-like way of making everyone she met believe that she was precisely who they needed her to be?

  “Break our hearts, is it?” Lord Lorimar slapped his knees and rose to his feet, looking tall and blond and extremely handsome, the secret wish of many a debutante in Seasons past. “I think we’ve been insulted, Wally. As if we’re green-as-grass young bucks, about to succumb to the first pretty face we’ve ever seen. Tell you what, Bram—let’s have us a wager. Wally, you up for a wager?”

  “What sort of wager?” Sir Wallace asked carefully. “None of this business where the loser has to stand up at Covent Garden at the intermission and pull down his trousers before making a backward bow toward the box across the way.”

  “But you were splendid, Wally,” Bramwell said, smiling at the long-ago memory. So long ago. Perhaps a lifetime ago? No, not really. Only a half dozen or more years ago—before he had gone off to sea, before his father had run so publicly mad with the Widow Winstead. “It was only poor luck that Lady Radford had taken that moment to raise her lorgnette and do an inventory of that night’s attendance.”

  “If it’s very, very quiet,” Lord Lorimar put in facetiously, “I believe I can still hear her shrieks. Oh, very well, Wally, if you’re going to be a spoilsport otherwise, we’ll make it something simpler. We won’t even call it a wager. We’ll call it a challenge—with a forfeit to be paid by any or all of us who fail to meet that challenge.”

  “Something less embarrassing, that’s what,” Sir Wallace corrected, looking into the bottom of his empty glass. “But first, Lorrie—what are we wagering—um, challenging—about?”

  “About Miss Winstead, of course,” the baron explained reasonably. “We’re to make a pact among the three of us—or a challenge, or a wager, whatever we want to call it. I’m including you, Bram, as you’re betrothed, not dead, and just in case Miss Winstead is as beautiful and desirable as you seem to be afraid she is. And now, this is the challenge. We three will agree here and now that we will not have our hearts broken by Bram’s ward. In fact, we three cannot, will not, become in any way infatuated with, fall in love with, or even very much like Bram’s ward. Maybe someone should be writing all of this down?”

  “Not my ward,” Bramwell slid in, automatically contradicting his friend who undoubtedly knew he would, for the Baron’s smile grew even wider.

  “And if we do?” Sir Wallace asked, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. “What is the forfeit? And shouldn’t we at least meet the chit first? What if she isn’t anything out of the ordinary? We might be able to resist her with no effort at all. Where’s the sport in that?”

  Lord Lorimar looked to Bramwell, who was now biting the insides of both cheeks in an attempt to keep any betraying expression from his face. “I’ve seen the mother. And our friend here called the daughter dangerous, Wally, remember? That’s definitely out of the ordinary. Now, to the forfeit,” he continued, beginning to pace the carpet in front of the duke’s desk. “It has to be something sufficiently sobering, so that we really, really don’t want to do it.”

  “Rescue Ensign Porker from Bram’s estate and ride him bareback through the Park?” Sir Wallace offered, looking hopefully to Bramwell.

  “Don’t punish an innocent pig,” the duke said, giving in to a small smile. He really should put a stop to this, tell his friends no. But, then again, when was the last time he’d had himself a spot of fun?

  “Point well taken,” Lord Lorimar agreed. “This must remain private, just among ourselves.” He walked behind the desk and drew a sheet of paper from the center drawer as the duke held a pen out to him. “Thank you, Bram,” he said, dipping the pen into the inkwell and beginning to scratch across the paper. “We shall work out an ascending series of forfeits. And we must be honest, with ourselves, and with each other. This is to be a test of honor as well, gentlemen. Now let’s get down to it. If, for instance, any of us was to find ourselves admiring Miss Winstead, the offending party will... will—I’ve got it! The offending party will be forced to attend Almack’s three weeks running.”

  “Three weeks?” Sir Wallace dropped his chin into his cravat. “I never attend but the once, and that’s only because m’mother expects it, her being such great chums with Lady Jersey and all. Make it two, Lorrie. Any more than that and Mama will be having expectations of her own. I have enough on my plate without that.”

  The baron scratched out the line he had just written and began again. “All right. That’s two weeks for admiring Miss Winstead. You don’t have to confess to your admiration, but you must be honest within yourself. Within ourselves, as I naturally am included. What else?”

  There was a slight scratching at the door, and Bobbit entered, carrying a tray of small cakes.

  “I have it!” Sir Wallace exclaimed, snagging one of the iced confections before the butler could place the silver tray on the desk and retire. “For everything else after the first infraction—from feeling in charity with the girl for a moment, to asking her to dance more than once of an evening, to entertaining the notion of taking her out for the Promenade or to the theater—for everything up to proposing marriage—we have to give Bobbit here five pounds. Every time, every infraction. We don’t have to shame ourselves by confessing anything to each other that way. We just have to pay Bobbit. Agreed?”

  “Five pounds? Each and every time? I say, Wally, ain’t that a bit steep?”

  “What’s the matter, Lorrie?” Sir Wallace quipped, grinning. “You that unsure of yourself?”

  “Your Grace?” Bobbit asked, turning to his employer in some confusion.

  “It’s not to worry, old fellow,” Bram said comfortingly, winking at Lord Lorimar. “You’re about to become independently wealthy.”

  “Yes, Your Grace. Very good, Your Grace,” the butler said, bowing—and looking toward Sir Wallace hopefully. “Anything else, Your Grace?”

  “Not really, no. Unless you know when the ladies will be ready for their drive?”

  “Miss Waverley has just now arrived, Your Grace, and Lady Gwendolyn and Miss Winstead are with her in the drawing room. Shall I have the equipage and your mounts brought round, Your Grace?”

  Bramwell nodded, and the butler withdrew, but not before taking one last, quizzical look at Sir Wallace. “Well, that’s it then, gentlemen,” the duke said, ready to have this unnerving conversation behind him as he motioned for his friends to depart the room ahead of him.

  “Not quite,” Lord Lorimar said, holding up the pen. “There’s one more thing. Marriage.”

  “Marriage?” Sir Wallace stumbled to the drinks table to fortify himself. “It would take a bit more than a pretty face to lead me to proposing marriage, let me tell you. A whacking great lot more. Besides,” he added, turning to point at Bramwell, “Bram here is already all but bracketed. That leaves only you and me, Lorrie.”

  “True and true, Wally, but the list isn’t complete unless we include the forfeit if one of us actually loses our head sufficiently to think about proposing marriage. A large forfeit, so that we’ll think twice, perhaps three times, before allowing this dangerous woman to snare us in any parson’s mousetrap.”

  “I don’t believe I’m actually listening to this conversation, let alone being a part of it,” Bramwell said, sighing.

  Sir Wallace wagged a finger in his direction. “Now, now, Bram, Lorrie’s got a point. I came within a whisker of offering for Miss Keller last Season, if you remember. What a lucky escape that was, let me tell you. But I never would have fallen to that point if there had been a heavy forfeit to pay. Think of all the trouble a forfeit would save us.”

  Bramwell crossed to his friend and laid an arm across his shoulders. “Wally, Miss Keller went to an earl before you so much as got up your courage to ask if you could accompany her down to dinner. I don’t think she even knew your name.”

&
nbsp; Sir Wallace flushed to the roots of his dark blond hair. “I was about to declare myself, Bram, but Wakefield stole a march on me, that’s all. And thank the good Lord he did.”

  “This is getting us nowhere, gentlemen, and the ladies mustn’t be kept waiting,” Lord Lorimar declared, sanding the paper and then leaving it on the desk to dry. “Done and done. I’ve made up the forfeit myself. Any man among us who finds himself thinking about proposing marriage to Miss Winstead,” he said, looking down at what he had just written, “must make Samuel Seaton his bosom chum for a month.”

  Bramwell dropped his arm from Sir Wallace’s shoulder and glared at the man he had been so foolish as to believe was one of his best friends. “That isn’t funny.”

  “It isn’t?” Lord Lorimar’s gray eyes twinkled with barely concealed merriment. “I think it’s jolly amusing myself. He might be your heir, Bram, until you and Miss Waverley reproduce yourselves, but he’s also the most pathetic person in all the world. There have been, or so I’m told, those who have leapt in front of charging carriages on Bond Street, rather than have to meet up with him as he approaches along the flagway. Strong men who have cowered behind potted palms or small, innocent children, simply to avoid him. Whole battalions of people who have emigrated to America, just to assure themselves they won’t be seated next to him at some dinner party.”

  “Don’t tease, Lorrie.” Sir Wallace slid his arm around the duke’s shoulder, first giving him an encouraging slap on the back. “Oh, come on, Bram,” he said bracingly. “Lorrie’s only funning with you. Your cousin isn’t that terrible. No, never mind. He is. Sad Samuel Seaton.” He shivered. “I’d rather listen to my Uncle Winston go on and on yet again about the purulent carbuncle he had on his backside last year.”

  He shivered once more, mumbling half under his breath as he dropped his arm and turned to walk toward the hallway. “Sad Samuel’s even worse than a purulent carbuncle, I swear he is. Well, that settles it. I’m ready to meet Miss Winstead now, forewarned and forearmed, knowing full well I’d never think of proposing marriage to her. Every time I look at her, all I’m going to see is a month of Sad Samuel.”

  As Baron Lorimar moved to follow after Sir Wallace, the duke took hold of his sleeve, pulling him to a halt.

  “You’re a bad and woefully twisted man, Lorrie, do you know that?”

  “Yes, Bram, I know. I’ve always considered it to be a large part of my charm,” Lord Lorimar replied, patting Bramwell’s cheek. “But you yourself have nothing to worry about, right? You and Miss Waverley will soon be married, and Miss Winstead—the dangerous Miss Winstead—will be long gone. Or so you say.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” the duke asked, following after the Baron and stepping in front of him.

  Lord Lorimar stopped at the bottom of the stairs now that his friend had blocked them. “It means just this, Bram. I’ve never before heard a woman described as dangerous. And that makes me wonder. Clearly you’re not totally unmoved by the girl. It might be nice, frankly, to see you do something, well, something at least vaguely stupid, even foolhardy. You’ve been so dedicatedly upright since your father and the Widow Winstead flew off that balcony. Not that I’m saying you don’t have good reason to be as unlike the man as you wish, for the sake of the family name and all of that. But we used to laugh more, Bram, I’m sure of it.” He shook his head. “Never mind. I think we’re just getting old, that’s all. We’ll never see thirty again, none of us. It’s damned depressing, that’s what it is. Well, hul-lo!”

  Bram didn’t have to peek behind him to the head of the staircase, to where Lord Lorimar and Sir Wallace were now staring. “She’s up there, isn’t she?” he asked quietly, hoping to shake his friends out of their stunned immobility.

  “Oh, yes. Oh, yes, Bram, she most certainly is up there.” Lord Lorimar put his hand on the duke’s arm and unceremoniously pushed him out of the way so that he could mount the stairs. “And so am I!”

  The duke stood back, waiting until Sir Wallace had also begun climbing the stairs, then finally turned and looked to where Sophie Winstead was standing, peering down over the curving sweep of banister that ran along the first floor of the mansion. She was cloaked and ready for her drive through the still-cool morning, dressed all in emerald green, accents of ermine on her ridiculously adorable hat, her wide collar, and making up the outrageously large muff she carried.

  A small riot of warm brown ringlets escaped the ridiculous hat, framing her face. A wide smile lit her gamine-like features, and her throaty laugh as Lord Lorimar bent over her hand filled the air like a heavenly chorus. She looked like Christmas morning. A long-hoped-for present just waiting to be unwrapped. A succulent pudding, bursting with sweetness. A bright, luscious, delicious cherry set atop the season’s first dish of iced cream. A faintly rumpled, touchable Gypsy. Eager. Alive. Part innocent, part temptress. A gift. A curse.

  She looked, Bram decided yet again, dangerous.

  And then Isadora Waverley appeared behind Sophie. Taller, slimmer, straighter. Her outer garments were a sedate slate blue, cut along more severe, sophisticated lines. That was his betrothed. Icily beautiful, composed, regal, quietly elegant, without a single sleek black hair out of place. She was the epitome of good breeding, excellent taste, refinement. Bram attached his gaze to her—as a drowning man would cling to a bit of driftwood.

  There is, however, a limit at which

  forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

  — Edmund Burke

  Chapter Five

  Lady Gwendolyn’s shiny black landau, its divided roof folded back to open it up to the sun, comfortably seated four persons. Uncomfortably, it sat six, if one did not balk at being stuck cheek by jowl with two other persons. Lord Lorimar and Sir Wallace, whose mounts remained behind at the Portland Square mansion, seemed not to mind at all—clambering up into the landau like drooling, near-to-blithering idiots directly after Sophie, and then seating themselves on either side of her.

  The duke, however, had graciously chosen not to discommode his aunt and fiancée, or—as Sophie thought—to make such a cake of himself over her saucy smile and outlandishly overdone ensemble. After handing the other two ladies up into the landau, he had mounted a handsome-looking bay gelding and followed along behind as the party was driven to the Park. To see. To be seen.

  And Mrs. Farraday, the dear, oblivious Mrs. Farraday, was left behind on the flagway, forgotten by everyone and still frowning at a footman who was all but shouting in her ear, telling her she was being allowed a morning free of the responsibility of her ward.

  Sophie was delighted, both with the day and with her company. The sun was bright, even though the air still had more than a bit of a nip in it. She laughed out loud as an unexpected breeze caught them as the landau moved away from the protection of buildings and into the park, nearly costing Sophie her wonderful new hat.

  “Oh, this is lovely!” she exclaimed, sitting up very straight and looking around her at all the nursery maids and their charges walking the paths, at the gentlemen, on horseback or strolling about, swinging their canes and acting very much like young colts just turned out into the fields for the first time. There was color everywhere. In the bright green new leaves, the flowers lining the paths, the ladies’ gowns, the gentlemen’s canary yellow waistcoats, the brightly colored carriages and curricles and high-perch phaetons.

  And the air smelled so good. Delicious. Whenever the wind shifted Sophie smelled something else new and exciting. The aroma of hot meat pies and currant pastries. The heady fragrance of pollen-rich flowers. The smell of horse, of freshly turned dirt, of chimney smoke; the odd attraction of Sir Wallace’s wine-sweet breath, even the tangy scent of tobacco that lingered on Lord Lorimar’s clothing.

  How she had missed the company of gentlemen!

  “Lud, Miss Winstead,” Isadora Waverley prompted from the facing seat—she and Lady Gwendolyn were, of course, ensconced on the front-facing seat, so that Sophie had to content herself with seeing w
here she had been rather than where she was going, “a word of advice, if I might? You’re not to gawk, my dear. It smacks of the country miss, you understand.”

  Sophie dragged her gaze from the rows of distant rooftops and the comical sight of the dozens of variously shaped chimney pots that poked against the sky. “Oh, Miss Waverley, you are so right!” she exclaimed, taking her gloved hands from her muff and spreading them wide—nearly clipping the grinning Sir Wallace on his shiny red nose. “I’m such a silly goose. Why, my jaw has been at half cock ever since we set out from Wimbledon, Desiree and I, so that I shouldn’t be surprised if I end up with a sparrow flying into my open mouth. I have never seen the city, you understand—and find it all so exciting, so beautiful. To have seen London is to have seen the world, yes?”

  Lord Lorimar bent forward to retrieve Sophie’s muff from the floor of the landau, handing it back to her with a flourish even as she thanked him as if he had just presented her with a diamond the size of Sir Wallace’s nose. “You have seen but a small part of our fair metropolis, Miss Winstead,” he told her. “However, I would consider it an honor and a privilege to show you more of it.”

  Sophie was about to agree, then bit her lip, looking to Miss Waverley. “Would—would that be all right?”

  Isadora smiled her usual cool, gracious smile. “I should think that Lord Lorimar might have better presented his invitation to Lady Gwendolyn, my dear, and asked her permission before approaching you, but I see no reason to withhold such an innocent treat. Lady Gwendolyn?”

  “Me? You’re asking me?” Lady Gwendolyn frowned. “Shouldn’t he be asking Bramwell? She’s his ward. That’s a lovely brooch you’re wearing, Miss Waverley. I do so admire garnets. May I have it?”

  Isadora looked at her ladyship in some shock. “May you have it? Lud, my lady, I think not. It was a gift from my father.” She looked at the now crestfallen Lady Gwendolyn queerly, then seemed to remember that the woman was her betrothed’s aunt. “But I do thank you for the compliment, my lady. Truly.”