The Wicked Duke Takes a Wife

Chapter Fourteen

They called for Edlyn at the academy.

Harriet doubted that the afternoon could hold a worse experience, until the duke’s carriage stopped to collect Lady Constance Chatterton from her father’s Mayfair residence. Nothing could alter history. Harriet could not undo what she had done. Nor could she disown her family, even though she had as little to do with them as possible. They’d been brave souls, the Boscastles, to give her another chance.

But brave or not, it wasn’t right that they had to endure disgrace on her behalf. She’d never felt more humiliated in her life than when she’d heard Lady Clipstone reveal her past to the duke. What he actually thought of her after the crow’s visit, or what she thought of him, remained unclear. It had crossed her mind to warn him that employing her would probably cause him more embarrassment in the future.

She just hadn’t realized that it would happen twice in the same day.

Lady Powlis had squeezed her hand several times during the short drive, as if nothing had changed between them. Harriet was afraid to acknowledge her.

Could it be that simple? Another act of grace?

The duke made no attempt at all to reassure her. He sat, his broad-shouldered frame seemingly relaxed, his gaze impassive, even as his presence filled Harriet with unholy pleasure.

Then the carriage stopped. Lady Constance floated down the steps of her home in a lemon silk dress that paid court to her perfect white skin, her sable-brown hair, her guileless gray eyes. She moved with the confidence of a princess, each step dainty and as effortless as walking on air. Her jaunty fox-trimmed hat sat at just the perfect angle to enhance her aristocratic features. Envy poisoned Harriet’s pleasure. She hoped Constance would get her slippers caught on the carriage steps and fall back into a pile of fresh horse droppings. She hoped Constance would stink of it and befoul the duke’s next breath.

Petty, she admitted it. But so it went. Lady Constance’s family claimed blue blood that harked back to a misty age when all it took to become royalty was to raise up an army of louts who would lop off the requisite number of heads and vanquish a country, allowing their leader to wed the daughter of the conquered king.

“Lady Powlis!” Constance exclaimed, in an elegantly pitched voice that made Harriet miserably aware of her own imperfect elocution. “How youthful you look! And Miss Edlyn, what a beautiful young woman you are! I shall glow with pride to introduce you around.”

Her emotionless gray eyes dismissed Harriet in a glance.

Last, but for the longest time, she bestowed her attention upon the duke. Her eyes lowered at his polite if indifferent greeting. With a brief but ladylike hesitation, she sank into the space beside him, Edlyn scrunching up in obvious resentment to make room.

It was then that Lady Constance took over the world. In dulcet tones she told the duke that she marched for prison reform. She described the cast-off clothing that she generously donated to street whores. She counted off the charities she sponsored. She spoke of her stand against cesspools. She named the various orphanages she visited until Harriet crossed her eyes, picturing this pretty thing blowing kisses to the waifs who gazed up at her like a good fairy. As if a tossed-off kiss could rid their lives of hunger, abandon, and loneliness.

Lady Powlis fell asleep.

The duke muttered something.

Constance cocked her head. “You do remind me of Liam,” she told him with a deep, sorrowful sigh. “My heart aches for what you have lost.”

And Harriet’s heart ached, too.

Women, Griffin thought in bemusement. They could torture and tease, provoke or please. Four of them, in varying moods, packed into a single carriage with an unwilling escort, did not an afternoon’s pleasant alchemy create. Or perhaps he was suffering from a case of what his aunt called the blue devils. Lady Clipstone’s unpleasant visit had cast a cloud over the day. Indeed, he felt the threat of rain in his bones.

He dared not look at Harriet again, in her garden-variety mint-green muslin gown with a bow knotted crookedly under the bodice. She had been shamed enough for one afternoon. Unadulterated anger coursed through him at the thought of it. Whatever doubts he harbored about her were his affair.

As one who lived under his protection-albeit not in the manner he might have privately wished-she would not again suffer insult in his presence. Did it matter that she had not been born a lady? She hadn’t pretended otherwise. She wouldn’t be working as a companion if she had greater expectations. He doubted his aunt would let her go at any price, however, even if it turned out Harriet was really a royal princess.

Which made him wonder suddenly why Primrose had been so eager to see him married off to the other woman in the carriage. The one his brother had expected to take as his wife along with the duchy.

Lady Constantly Chattering.

Poised, as full of herself as a champagne fountain. Beautiful. If one’s taste ran to the cool and calculating. Her first glance had surveyed him as if he were a stud to be purchased for breeding purposes. Which, in an amusing sense, he supposed he would be. He had not felt the slightest spark of passion when their eyes met. He didn’t care how well-bred or wealthy she was. Without passion, they might as well be two ceramic figures that graced a mantelpiece for display. The prospect of bedding her for the rest of his life appealed to him as much as did jumping into the Serpentine. And never coming up for air.

Lady Constance ignored the two footmen who stood waiting to assist her from the carriage. Griffin considered ignoring the slender gloved hand she waved in his direction. He was in fact more inclined to help the unfortunate Miss Gardner, who had ungracefully tumbled out the other side without benefit of footmen or folding steps. Fortunately, she sprang right back onto her feet, grinning up at the driver, who warned her not to slip.

“Shall we stroll?” Constance asked, glancing past him to the park.

Griffin watched his aunt abandon him, with her companion in tow. Edlyn wandered off alone. He glanced toward the path. A throng of well-heeled onlookers had collected against a row of curricles and phaetons as if to observe some momentous occasion.

“What are they waiting for?” he asked in amusement.

“Us,” Constance said with a sigh, as if he should have known.

Us. “Any particular reason?”

“Your grace has lived in that medieval castle far too long.” She tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. “Nod at them.”

“Why should I? I have no particular fondness for strangers.”

“It is expected of you. Do it.” She smiled up at him, revealing an alarmingly sharp set of teeth. “You cannot disappoint the beau monde.”

“You don’t know me very well.”

“Your grace takes his peerage too lightly, I’m afraid.”

And he was rapidly deciding he’d like to keep it that way.

He looked down at the top of her high-brimmed hat and wondered whether she had hunted the animal herself. “May I be honest with you?”

“May honesty not wait until we have made our first public appearance?” When he refused to defer, she released another sigh. “Say what you must, then.”

“I detest your hat.”

“I detest your aunt’s companion,” she said without hesitation. “She will have to go.”

He smiled then, but not at her or at their audience.

She gripped his forearm, her reticule banging against his elbow. He couldn’t imagine what she was carrying-the Crown jewels, perhaps-but whatever it was clunked between them like a ball and chain as they strolled toward the water.

“That is Lord Bermond in the caped coat,” she said. “Invite him to go shooting. The woman holding the parasol is his mistress. Pretend she is invisible. And-” She frowned in displeasure. “Never mind. After we attend a soirée or two, you will forget your primeval village and let our civilized ways guide you onto a higher path.”

“But I’m somewhat primeval myself.”

“That is the unfortunate reputation that precedes you,” she murmured.

His eyes darkened.

She would have been wise to take notice. But she did not.

Harriet had no opportunity to venture an opinion of the graceful woman walking at the duke’s side. It would have been improper to use the words that came to mind. Moreover, Lady Powlis conveyed their mutual disapproval in an eloquent if profane outburst that rendered Harriet’s appraisal superfluous. She merely nodded at her ladyship’s spate of insults. After all, she was paid to be an agreeable companion.

“Why do you not like her, madam?” she asked when she could slip a word in edgewise.

Lady Powlis swung her cane in the air like a master swordsman. “There is not a sincere bone in her body.”

“But those bones are put together in a manner that his grace seems to find engrossing.”

The sword swung toward Harriet. “Save the sauce for another goose. You know perfectly well that what I say is true.”

“Quite so,” Harriet said, trying to anticipate at which point of the compass the cane would next aim.

Lady Powlis’s voice broke unexpectedly. “It’s all wrong. And it is all my fault. I have pushed him into that conceited vixen’s arms. I have used guilt and sorrow to encourage this match. I-” She paused, pale and out of breath.

Harriet glanced around the park in concern. She spotted Edlyn standing in the midst of what appeared to be a small assembly of governesses and their energetic charges. A cocker spaniel ran barking around a tree. “Shall we find a bench for you to rest?”

“I don’t need rest. I need to find a wife who will care for him and Edlyn.”

“And who cares for you, madam.”

Lady Powlis suddenly looked deflated. “That is why I hired you, my girl.”

Harriet shook her head. “Then, in all fairness, I will tell you again that the complaint lodged against me today is only the start of it. You would not be ill-advised to dismiss me.”

“I pay you to agree with me, ill-advised or not.”

“Yes, madam.” Harriet’s gaze drifted to the duke and the elegant lady guiding him toward a group of ladies and gentlemen who seemed eager to make his acquaintance. “She’s beautiful.”

“Beauty fades.”

“She’s an heiress.”

“Wealth corrupts.”

“His grace doesn’t appear to mind whether she fades away or corrupts him.”

She sighed as the duke broke away from the gathering. Lady Constance hesitated and then hurried after him. Suddenly Harriet resented the Boscastles for introducing her to a world in which she would always be an outsider, the design of a modern Prometheus who would meet a tragic fate only because she wanted a mate. She sighed in self-pity. She was really a little monster. Lady Constance had skin the color of moonlight. Harriet’s blushed and went blotchy at every emotion. She could never float about with a fox on her head without looking like a court jester. She had never taken a stand against cesspits. She had, however, once pushed a boy who was chasing her into one.

Lady Powlis’s voice broke into her thoughts. “I would do anything to stop this courtship, do you hear? I cannot bear another broken heart in my family. We must put an end to this no matter what it takes.”

Harriet felt a breeze quiver through the air at the duke’s approach. Lady Constance called back to one of the footmen to fetch her rabbit muff from the carriage. As the servant turned, a gray stillness enshrouded the park. The duke looked directly at Harriet. The unconcealed desire in his eyes tore through her like lightning.

She caught her breath. The clouds burst forth with such a sudden drenching rain that a malevolent wizard might have dumped a cauldron of bad wishes upon the gathering. Griffin glanced up with a deep laugh. The ladies around him shrieked, running for shelter, while the gentlemen complained about ruined attire and another afternoon better spent at the club.

“Look at her now,” Lady Powlis whispered over Harriet’s shoulder. “Her ringlets are dissolving in the rain.”

“Perhaps she’ll melt,” Edlyn said, her lip curling.

Harriet turned in surprise, hard-pressed to constrain a laugh. “That isn’t nice of you, Miss Edlyn. Ill thoughts against another are not to be spoken aloud.”

Edlyn smiled wickedly. Harriet felt a rush of bittersweet satisfaction and smiled back. An unbreakable bond, an unexpected one, had been formed.

Lady Constance cast the duke a furious look and ran for the carriage. He watched her for a moment, then strode toward the three women huddled together in the rain. “Are you all mad, my little ducks? Must I gather you under my wing?”

Harriet started to laugh.

He pulled off his coat, threw it over Edlyn’s head, offered one arm to Primrose, the other to Harriet.

There was grace, after all.

The four of them dashed for the carriage as one. The footmen met them halfway. Harriet laughed again, staring down at her muddy flat-heeled slippers.

She couldn’t imagine anything more fun than this, not even a midnight ball. It made up for the misery that she had been dealt earlier in the day.

And then a cry of unadulterated terror immobilzed her, indeed, everyone within earshot, to the spot. She looked up through the rain as a scruffy young man darted from behind a tree. A knife glimmered in his hand and flashed up toward the woman standing in front of him. Lady Constance went a deathly shade of white. The servant who was holding an umbrella over her head backed away.

“Oh, no,” Harriet whispered, swallowing hard. “Not again. Not now. Don’t do it.”

The young man was quick on his feet. Quicker than lightning. He ought to be. He had taught Harriet how to cut a purse. He shook his fist under Lady Constance’s chin with one hand. The other efficiently severed the strings of her reticule from her limp grasp.

Quicker than lightning, Harriet thought, although not quicker than she or the duke. They broke into a run at the same instant and intersected when Griffin turned abruptly to impede her progress, throwing her a look of unhidden disgust.

“For the love of God, Harriet. What do you think you are doing? You’re only slowing me down. I’m more than capable of taking care of a little bastard like that.”

“So am I,” she said, rain washing down her neck in cold rivulets.

“You damned fool,” he muttered. “I’ve lost him now because of you. What am I supposed to do?”

She stood before him with the calm acceptance of what could never be changed. “Go back to Lady Constance and comfort her. That was one of my half brothers who stole her bag. I’ll get it back, don’t you worry.”

“Your brother, Harriet?” he said in disbelief.

“You know what I was. Now you know what I could have been. Frightening, isn’t it?”

She walked around him.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he shouted at her.

“I’m going ’ome.” She took off her slippers, one at a time, and tossed them at him over her shoulders. They didn’t match her dress, anyway. “Take care of your family, duke. And yourself. You’re not as bad as everyone thinks.”