Dukes by the Dozen

by Grace Burrowes

  Of course, he thought almost smiling. A marquess’s daughter. She had undoubtedly balanced a goodly number of books on her head.

  “How can I help you, Your Grace?” she asked,setting the glasses down on a table and arranging her skirts. “I don’t believe we’ve met?”

  Adam was becoming even more enchanted. She sat in a shaft of sunlight that wove yellows and reds into what had appeared to be dun brown hair. It also did not escape his attention that she had large, sparkling green eyes that seemed indescribably soft.

  Taking a moment to lay his cane against the couch so he could reach his feet more easily, he faced her, hoping he looked harmless and friendly. “To my eternal regret,” he said, “we have not met before now. I’m afraid that I have only recently been allowed to return home from the Continent. But I know about you. Jamie spoke and wrote of you often.”

  She stilled, her expression crumpling a little, and Adam regretted his flippancy. “Please accept my apology,” he said. “And my sincere condolences. I should have begun at the beginning. I am Adam Marrick, Mrs. Grace. Jamie’s cousin.”

  And there it was, he thought. The reason Jamie had fallen in love with Georgina Wyndham in the first place. That smile. Wide, bright, warm, all-encompassing, as if she embraced not just him but the world. Before he knew it, Adam was smiling back.

  “He loved you very much,” he said.

  Her eyes glittered with welling tears, but that smile held. “I know,” she whispered. “I loved him as well. I am so very glad to finally meet you. He spoke of you as well, of course. You were quite his hero, even though you didn’t have the sense to join the Navy. Hussars, wasn’t it?”

  “It was.”

  She nodded. “I suspect that Jamie was quite jealous, actually. He never did manage to sit a horse properly, or I believe he would have trotted off after you like a faithful pup.”

  Adam shook his head, his chest tight with too-familiar grief. Jamie had only been one of the good friends he had lost. At least he hadn’t been forced to see Jamie’s body blasted to pieces or hold him as he died. Small comfort.

  “No,” he said. “I believe he was meant for the sea. A true Dorsetman.”

  Her own grief darkened her expressive eyes, even as she kept smiling. “I am so glad you have made it home safe.”

  He grinned and tapped at his leg. “A bit banged up, but whole.”

  Her face folded once again into bemusement. “But...duke? The last I heard you were a mere mister….well, colonel.”

  His smile grew wry. “There was a cousin,” he said. “On my father’s side. He and his son were lost at sea while I was in Belgium. I came home to find myself lord and master of a rather shabby manor house in Cumbria, an even shabbier town house in Mayfair and a stables full of very prime thoroughbreds in Newmarket. Needless to say, it has been an adjustment. Otherwise I would have looked for you much sooner.”

  She waved off his apology. “I’m not sure you would have found me much sooner.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “That is what I hear. The lawyers told me that you have been...shall we say, unavailable for the better part of two years until this summer? Something about your brother’s wife and child needing refuge?”

  “A long story for another time. Are you staying nearby, sir? I would be happy to put you up here, but as I said, my brother and his wife are currently in London dealing with some family business.”

  “No, no,” he demurred. “I am at the King’s Nose.” He couldn’t help a laugh. “You do have some imaginative innkeepers hereabouts.”

  Her chuckle was throaty and sweet. “Will Bass claims George the First once stopped in for an ale while suffering from a head cold and left his handkerchief behind. I imagine it’s as good a story as any.”

  She was about to say something else when a clatter rose outside the parlor doors. Adam was all set to jump to his feet to defend the house, but Jamie’s wife didn’t budge. She simply put on a kind smile and waited as the doors were once again yanked open and a line of servants processed in, each seeming to barely keep hold of wobbly trays filled with a tea service and enough bakery items to have fed an officer’s mess. Adam considered it one of his greater acts of bravery that he held his place even as the tray of teacakes tipped precariously in his direction, threatening the cleanliness of his attire. The girl fighting against gravity couldn’t have been more than fifteen, her mobcap sliding down over her forehead and her uniform just a little too large and long. It was a recipe for disaster.

  And yet Jamie’s wife simply sat with a quiet smile on her face. Adam was truly impressed. She was inches from being scalded by the tea her butler carried.

  “Set those on the table by me, please, Mary,” she said calmly, gesturing toward the tea table.

  “Yes’m.” Mary didn’t look nearly as assured as she bent her knees to deposit the tray on the table with a sharp clang that spoke ill for the table’s health. Behind her another girl, this one with the darkest skin Adam had ever seen and a limp almost as pronounced as his, followed with another tray of delicacies. The butler, his freckled face taut with concentration, lowered the tea tray onto a second table. The pot slid back and forth a bit, but failed to fly and settled with no more than a small rattle when it was deposited. Adam quashed an impulse to applaud.

  He turned to witness the return of Georgie Grace’s magnificent smile, which truly seemed to cast its glow across the three young faces. “Oh, excellent, all three of you. You have improved so much.” Then, leaning forward a bit, she pitched her voice low. “Would you like to meet a duke?”

  Three faces froze. The girl named Mary actually gasped.

  “Your Grace,” Jamie’s wife said. “I realize it is a bit of a protocol breech, but may I introduce you to three of our staff, who have only been with us for a month, and see how beautifully they are doing.”

  “I do see,” he agreed. “They have great potential.”

  She turned that blinding smile on him, leaving him a bit dizzy, and returned to her staff. “Pay your respects as I announce you. Our butler is Tom Nelson, our maids Maisy Tuesday and Mary Willard.” Each bobbed in turn and waited. “Now, off with you,” she ordered. “If there are any pastries left, share them with the others.”

  The three fled as if Adam had growled. He couldn’t help but smile.

  “Others?” he asked.

  Her smile grew impish as she bent to prepare the tea. “We are the despair of the parish...well, I imagine I am. Jack and Olivia haven’t been here enough lately to be considered accomplices. But I decided that since I am mostly out of society it would be a safe place for them to train up. I admit they have been a delight.”

  “Can I ask how Maisy came to be here? She doesn’t quite seem to be a local.”

  Immediately the smile disappeared. “She found herself lost on foreign shores when her American master died of the ague in London. My sister-by-marriage, Olivia, found her and brought her to us. I am so glad, too. She is teaching me so much about America. I’m even learning a bit of the Creole language. She is from New Orleans, where we lost so many of our brave young men.”

  “A stupid venture altogether, that war.”

  She just nodded.

  For a long few minutes the only sounds that could be heard in the room were the crackle of the fire and the soft chime of porcelain being moved about as Georgie Grace prepared tea. Adam soaked in the ritual of normalcy like sun on a cold body. This was what he had dreamed of back on the Peninsula, small homey moments spent in safe places. The gentle scents of women—hers seemed to be something flowery—and the comforting motions of daily ritual. Tea and cakes. A woman’s laughter. A warm fire on a cold day. He wanted to close his eyes and just drink it in.

  “Your Grace?”

  Good lord, he’d actually closed his eyes. “Adam,” he corrected, his eyes wide open as he accepted his teacup and cakes. “Please.”

  She smiled, looking a bit bemused, not that he blamed her. “Then I am Georgie. And if I am any judge of things,
you will soon meet Lully.”

  “Lully? Do you mean your daughter? I thought her name was Charlotte.”

  She grinned. “Lilly Charlotte, actually. Only her cousin couldn’t pronounce Lilly. It rather stuck.”

  Adam watched her take a delicate bite of her cake. She left a bit of icing caught just on the upper corner of her mouth. Adam couldn’t take his eyes off of it. He couldn’t quash the urge to reach up and brush it away. Or kiss it away….

  Napoleon’s knees, he’d been away too long. Ducking his head, he slurped at his tea, scalding the roof of his mouth as he did so until he could rein his less civilized urges back in again. It had been so long since he’d even thought about lust. The multiple surgeries on his leg had mostly seen to that.

  Well, evidently he was past all that.

  “Adam, are you all right? Is it your leg, or another injury? Would you like to lie down?”

  He opened his eyes again, afraid that now he was the one blushing. “No, no. I was just enjoying the tea. I’ve been thinking how these are the small moments a soldier thinks of when he’s lying on the cold ground in Spain.”

  Oh, sweet Christ, he was really going to be lost if she didn’t turn that sympathetic gaze somewhere else. It made him want to just lay himself at her feet.

  If his leg were more dependable, he’d jump up and pace. He was afraid, though, that he’d end up with his face in her lap, and that wouldn’t promote his intentions here a bit.

  “Lully,” he blurted out. “I’m really here for her.”

  His words were met with a rather stark silence. “Pardon?”

  He nodded, setting down his saucer. “I am actually here to bring her some news.”

  Again Georgie tilted her head. “Lully is four, Your Grace. What news could you have to give her?”

  This wasn’t going the way he’d planned. He should have believed Jamie from the start. Maybe his reaction to Georgie wouldn’t have knocked him so off-center.

  “I need to take her to Scotland.”

  Georgie froze. “I beg your pardon?”

  He tried closing his eyes again. “She is needed there.”

  She was staring at him as if he’d begun to bark like a dog. “In Scotland.”

  He nodded, and surrendered to the inevitable. It wouldn’t get any easier with the waiting. “Life has just changed forever for her, Georgie. She is no longer simply a little girl.” A deep breath didn’t help, so he just dove in and opened his eyes again. “She’s a duchess.”

  Georgie laughed. “She is no such thing.”

  It was pointless to argue.

  “Are you feeling perfectly well, Your Grace?” she asked, getting to her feet. “I can call for the local physician. He is old, but….”

  He should have known this would be her reaction. “No,” he said, There was no avoiding it. He had to get to his feet as well. “No,” he said, grabbing his cane and hoisting himself up, his knee protesting like an unoiled hinge. “I am not ill. Please sit again so I might.”

  She flushed, but she sat. Adam did the same, trying not to wince.

  “And please,” he said. “My name is Adam.” He considered picking up his cup again and decided against it. He had a feeling he’d be on his feet again soon. “I was coming to see you anyway. I promise. Not only because I wanted to meet the woman who had stolen Jamie’s heart, but because I made a promise to him.”

  “That is lovely.” Her voice didn’t sound like it. “But not to the point.”

  He nodded and took another breath. “There is news,” he repeated. “Jamie’s mother has died.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She neither sounded nor looked like she meant it. Having known Jamie’s mother well, he couldn’t really blame her.

  “How can that concern us?” she asked. “Jamie’s family made certain we knew we were not welcome.”

  “Well, since Jamie is…gone, it means that Lully has inherited. I need to take her with me to accept.”

  Adam didn’t think you could see fire in the color green. He certainly could now.

  “Inherited? Inherited what? Jamie was disowned.”

  “You cannot disown a title, Mrs. Grace. Your daughter is now a duchess in her own right.”

  She was shaking her head. “Don’t be ridiculous. Girls cannot inherit titles. They pass along the males. My father was quite specific about that when he was complaining about his oldest two daughters.”

  “Scottish titles can. This one passed from Jamie’s great-uncle to his mother to...well, it would have been Jamie. But now it passes to Jamie’s child. Which is where I come in. It is my duty to take her to verify her title.”

  She was up again, glaring down at him. “Try not to be absurd. My daughter is not going anywhere. Certainly not to Scotland. You do realize that it is January, Your Grace.”

  “Not Scotland immediately,” he acknowledged, eying his cane and wondering how many times he could get her to sit back down. “I should have made that clear. To London to secure her title, but she will need to travel to the estate in Scotland as soon as it is possible.”

  She sat back down with a bit of a thump. “Well, she isn’t going. She is a four year old girl.”

  He drew a careful breath, wondering why she should be so adamant. “You do know I am her trustee.”

  She stiffened and seemed to grow in stature. “I know this is the first time since Jamie died that you have mentioned it, either in person or letter. We have been dealing quite successfully with Mr. Carson at the bank.”

  “I know. But you were here with your brother and safe, and it didn’t seem there was anything I was needed for. And then Jamie’s mother died, and the duchy of Kintyre has passed to your daughter. But she must attend the Chancery Court to make it official.”

  It was as if she completely froze. “In that case, she politely declines.”

  “She cannot. Her people will suffer if she does not. The duchy will go into abeyance and most of their land given over to sheep, which would uproot all her crofters. I cannot allow that to happen, and so it is my duty to take the duchess home.”

  She was glaring now. “She. Is. Four.”

  “And as trustee I will act in her stead. But she needs to be there.”

  She seemed to glide up to her feet, rising to her full height, which suddenly seemed not so insignificant. Following again to his own feet, Adam wondered suddenly how anyone could possibly think she was forgettable. She was Boedica, Titania, Maeve. He had the oddest feeling she was looking down at him, instead of standing at his shoulder.

  And then she closed the conversation.

  “No.”

  Without another word she turned away and stalked out of the room, slamming the doors behind her with a force that made the walls shake. Ten minutes later Adam was standing out under the front portico waiting for his phaeton to be brought around after a much older man wearing livery ushered him out the front door and slammed it behind him.

  Well, he thought, struggling into his driving coat. That went well. Wait until he told her it was about to get even worse.

  Chapter 2

  He had a face that was completely forgettable. At least that was the way Jamie had described him. Only Jamie could have been so ridiculously wry. Adam Marrick, the Duke of Rothray was not, sadly, forgettable. He couldn’t even be dismissed as memorable. Even leaning on his cane like an octogenarian, he radiated power and command. His shoulders alone would have betrayed him, broad, lean, compelling. His body filled his corbeau coat and biscuit inexpressibles like poetry. If Georgie had met him before Jamie, she might have missed the sight of her husband altogether.

  And that jaw. You could cut glass with that jaw, she thought, pacing her brother’s library in a brisk circle. Slashing cheekbones, ocean-blue eyes and tumbled mahogany-colored hair that just brushed his collar. Her Jamie had been comfortable-looking, just a little plump with merry blue eyes and a cleft chin. His cousin looked no more like him than Georgie did. Except for the humor in his eyes. Whil
e the humor had lasted, anyway.

  What was she to do? Oh, she wished Jack and Olivia hadn’t thought it important to spend Christmas with the family. If only there were anybody else she could confide in. Anybody who understood the laws of peerage, anyway. She had so many questions that needed immediate answers.

  As she made another circuit, a shaggy gray head lifted from a set of huge paws, the gentle brown eyes tracking her like prey.

  “Thank you, Murphy,” Georgie said as if the Irish wolfhound had spoken. “But I need to work this one out myself.”

  Lully simply could not go. She was safe here. They both were, well out of the limelight. Well away from her parents, who had done such a thorough job of striking her name from the family Bible while threatening to confiscate her Lully if she didn’t stay out of sight. Not that they truly wanted Lully. But they would rather the girl be controlled under their eyes than leave her to possibly further soil the Wyndham marquessate under Georgie’s.

  How Jack put up with them Georgie didn’t know. But she wasn’t about to. And she was definitely not about to put herself in a position to test their threat. Lully was all she had. She was the reason Georgie had survived Jamie’s death.

  If the Wyndhams smelled a duchy in the wind, they wouldn’t let Lully go short of pitched battle.

  “Are you receiving?” a brisk voice asked from the doorway.

  Georgie didn’t stop moving, but she waved her guest in. “Settle someplace. I wouldn’t want to run you over.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Georgie threw a glance at the tall, prim woman who was even now arranging her gray serge dress about her on one of a pair of bloodred

  red leather chairs like a dove settling its feathers. It had been one of the greatest blessings of her life when she had come across Hattie Clark at the hiring agency. Hattie’s former employers had retired her without enough stipend to live on. Georgie had seen the iron-gray hair and straight back, the calm hands and the flash of need in those intelligent brown eyes and hired her on the spot. Hattie had become her trusted companion during the years when she had taken the children and hidden them all away.