A Duke Too Far

by Jane Ashford

  Conway, one of Alberdene’s two aged footmen, appeared around a corner and walked slowly up the corridor toward him. Most of the household staff had been in service here since his father’s time, or even his grandfather’s. All of them except the cook and her helper were decades older than Peter and had known him since he was born. They didn’t hesitate to express their disapproval when he offended their sense of what was proper, though they did it silently, for the most part. It was more like having a houseful of aged relatives than servants, Peter thought as he rose from his knees. “Yes, I know you don’t like to see me doing carpentry work, Conway. There’s no need to hover and scowl.”

  The old footman didn’t deign to reply, though he eyed his master’s toolbox with disdain.

  “I learned my skills at school, you know,” said Peter. “The one Papa chose.” Rather than send him to Eton or Harrow or Winchester, with other scions of noble families, his father had put him in the hands of an old Welshman with eccentric educational theories. “I think he expected me to come back as some sort of wizard,” he muttered. His father had specialized in forlorn hopes.

  Conway’s lips turned down further. “A visitor has arrived, Your Grace,” he said.

  Peter was startled. He wasn’t expecting anyone. He couldn’t recall when Alberdene had last had guests. And passing travelers were exceedingly rare here at the western edge of Shropshire. “Somebody who’s lost his way on the road?”

  “No, Your Grace.” Conway held out a visiting card. “He has a post chaise and all.”

  Peter took it and read. “The Earl of Macklin!” He scanned the words again with a mixture of astonishment and delight. In the six months since that unusual dinner in London, he and the earl had corresponded a bit. Peter had greatly enjoyed the letters, but Macklin had given no hint that he meant to visit Shropshire. Yet here was his card. Peter brushed the dust from the knees of his buckskin breeches and reached for his old blue coat, conscious that his ensemble did not even approach fashionable. Due to its origins, his shirt had a fall of lace at the neck. Well, he had nothing much better to change into. This would have to do. He picked up his tool case.

  “You won’t receive an earl carrying that,” said Conway, aghast.

  “Well, I won’t if you will take it for me.”

  “Of course, Your Grace.”

  “And put it where it belongs. Not in some forgotten cupboard.” Peter’s tools had gone astray more than once, as if Conway thought he could end the duke’s plebeian endeavors by hiding the implements.

  “Yes, Your Grace,” replied the footman stoically.

  Peter found Macklin in the main reception room of the modern wing—the one chamber at Alberdene that nearly met the standard of a ducal residence. Behind the earl stood a man who was clearly his valet and a lad of perhaps fifteen. “How good to see you,” said Peter, striding forward to offer his hand.

  “And surprising, I know,” said Macklin, shaking it. “I would have written, but I wasn’t certain of my plans until just lately. And since I was on my way south, I thought I would visit.”

  “You’re most welcome.” Peter was pleased to see him, though Alberdene was hardly on the way to anywhere.

  “Your letters made me curious about the place.”

  “I must warn you that I can’t entertain in the style to which you are undoubtedly accustomed. We’re rather ramshackle here. Though I do have a good cook.”

  “Much can be endured for a fine dinner,” replied the older man with a smile.

  Peter remembered how ill he’d been at the last meal they’d shared, in London. “Please sit down. And excuse me for a moment while I just see about…” He left the sentence hanging. No need to list the items that must be checked on. And the earl would soon learn that the bellpulls didn’t work. Peter hadn’t been able to trace what had gone wrong with the wires.

  He found the entire staff of Alberdene in the cavernous kitchen, clustered around a long wooden table and clearly agitated by the appearance of a noble visitor. Conway and his fellow footman, Evan, were lined up on one side as if to support each other. Rose and Tess, the middle-aged housemaids, stood nearer Mrs. Anselm, the cook. The latter’s young helper, Gwen, lurked behind them.

  The butler of Peter’s youth had died when he was away at school, and his father had never replaced him. Peter had tried to hire a housekeeper, but several very competent women who’d applied had walked once through the house and declined the position. Mrs. Anselm now wielded a kind of loose general authority, because no one else wanted it. “Lord Macklin will be with us for…a while,” Peter said. He hadn’t thought to ask how long Macklin meant to stay. Surely a few days, at least? “Have we a room that will do? He has his valet with him and a lad who will also need quarters.”

  Conway muttered something disparaging about a grand lord’s valet. Peter ignored it.

  “The blue bedchamber, I expect,” said Mrs. Anselm.

  “Curtains are threadbare,” said Tess.

  “Yes, but that fireplace doesn’t smoke,” replied the cook. “The boy can have the room across. We’ll see to the linens.”

  “They’ve all been patched,” said Rose. “What’s an earl going to think?”

  Suspecting that Macklin wouldn’t be surprised, having seen the state of Alberdene, Peter left them to prepare and returned to his guest.

  Macklin made no complaints about his accommodation. Of course he would be too polite to do so, Peter thought as they sat down to dinner that evening. Fortunately, Mrs. Anselm had conjured a tempting spread out of next to nowhere. She might never ask him what he would like to eat, or pay any heed if he tried to express a preference, but every dish she provided was delicious.

  Conway ladled soup into Peter’s waiting bowl, releasing a wonderful aroma on a wisp of steam. Peter picked up his spoon.

  “That is good!” said the lad Tom as they all tasted.

  Peter didn’t know quite what to make of him. Tom apparently had no last name, which made it vanishingly unlikely that he was related to the earl. He’d argued that he should eat in the kitchen, then given in with a shrug when Macklin said, “Not this time.” He had a pleasant, homely face and an engaging manner. Macklin treated him as one might a young nephew. Peter let the matter go. No doubt he would learn more with time.

  “Alberdene is quite venerable, I believe,” said the earl.

  “First established in the eleven hundreds,” replied Peter. “Normans subduing the Welsh Marches, you know. And then added onto in a slipshod way. I think of the place as rather like a dragon lying along the ridge. The head is the ruined Norman tower on the high point, and the tail is the modern wing where we are now. With a mass of muddled masonry in between.” Once he’d said the whole thing out loud, he wondered if it sounded odd.

  “Dragon, I like that,” said Tom. He’d finished his soup in record time.

  Peter picked up a knife to carve the roast chicken. “I say ‘modern,’” he added. “But this bit was built a hundred years ago.” He stopped himself from warning them again about the amenities. Or lack thereof. They’d seen by now. He served the chicken, offered sauce. They ate, and Peter enjoyed the company at table even more than the food. He’d had more than enough of dining alone.

  A bat swooped under the stone archway and into the dining room, veering this way and that in the breed’s characteristic erratic flight. It looked like a bit of black cloth jerked this way and that by an invisible puppeteer.

  Peter set down his fork and lifted a moldering implement that was routinely set beside his plate at meals, an open wooden paddle strung with a grid of sheep’s gut. With a practiced eye, he gauged the creature’s trajectory, and when it passed close to him, he reached up and gave it a sharp rap. The bat fell to the floor.

  Peter turned back to find his guests staring at him. They glanced at the recumbent bat, then back at him. Peter felt a flush spread over his cheeks.
This was what came of the sort of upbringing he’d been given. And of living alone for too long. He’d become a dashed eccentric. What must Macklin, one of society’s leading lights, think of him? “Ah,” he said. “Er, sorry. It’s a…technique I developed…for dealing with the bats.”

  Tom laughed in such an easy way that Peter silently blessed him. He set the paddle on the floor and gave Macklin a rueful smile.

  For his part, Arthur had been wondering why there was an ancient bit of wood sitting beside his host’s plate on the dinner table. Here was the answer.

  “They fly in now and then,” said Compton, looking embarrassed. “No one can find any holes in the roof, and yet there are always bats. I was trying to track them down when I found this paddle in an attic, years ago. Used for tennis in the Tudor courts, you know. No good for any sort of game now, but it works on the bats.”

  Arthur watched one of the aged footmen bend laboriously and pick up the bat with a napkin from the sideboard. He wrapped it as if he’d often performed this service.

  “Is it dead?” asked Tom.

  “No, just stunned,” said Compton. “I can’t bring myself to kill them. We put them out on the battlements.”

  The footman sighed audibly.

  “And I know they probably fly right back in,” said his master. “But even so.”

  “Reckon I couldn’t kill them either,” said Tom.

  The footman carried the small bundle out of the room.

  The young duke was an interesting fellow, Arthur thought, as they returned to the well-cooked meal. He’d thought him shy and anxious at the dinner in London, but Compton showed no sign of those traits now. A bit odd undoubtedly, but intelligent and amiable. Kind also. He oughtn’t to be living alone in this huge, silent house. Arthur would have to see if there was anything that could be done about that.

  * * *

  A heave of the post chaise dipping into a rut jerked Ada Grandison out of sleep and the dream that she’d hoped to outrun on this journey. No such luck. It had set its claws into her again, as it did most nights. Ada ground her eyelids together, but she couldn’t banish the image of Delia huddled at the bottom of the cliff from which she’d fallen, even though the accident had happened more than a year ago.

  The horrible mixture of grief and revulsion wrenched just as hard. The awful blankness of her friend’s dark eyes, the pallor of her skin, the wrongness of the way Delia lay on the muddy earth, a glowing, animated girl reduced to a husk—they all seemed even more vivid in the dream. Ada had touched her dead friend’s neck, hoping to find a pulse, and it was as if she could still feel the dank chill on her fingertips.

  Ada rubbed them together, eyes still closed. Why couldn’t she forget? Or not forget. Delia shouldn’t be forgotten. But…remember less sharply. This stomach-churning dread felt like a weakness. It should be gone by now, not getting worse. The months of broken sleep were wearing on her distressingly.

  She clenched her fist. Somebody must know how to banish such things, but she wasn’t acquainted with anyone who had found a friend lying cold and dead on the earth. If this journey didn’t help, she didn’t know what she was going to do. Actually. But it had to. It would! She’d arranged it for just that reason, or hope. She squeezed her eyelids even tighter. She was not going to cry. She shoved the images away, shut them out.

  After a time, the tremor passed. Ada opened her eyes and stared out the chaise window at the countryside passing backward away from her. Shropshire was wilder than her home county of Essex. And it seemed they’d had an early cold snap here this September. The morning light showed swathes of leaves turned from green to yellow or russet. The effect was quite lovely, Ada told herself. She should concentrate on that.

  They would reach their destination today. She would see the place where Delia had grown up and learn her secrets. It was going to help. She was determined that it would.

  Ada shifted in her seat. Her small deceptions would also be exposed. There were several items she hadn’t mentioned, even to her best friends, and these were all likely to come out in the next few hours. That would be a sticky bit to get through.

  A low growl made her look down. Her small dog, nestled in the pile of rugs that warmed their feet, was worrying a kid glove. Bits of it lay scattered around her. “Ella, no!” said Ada. The dog stopped chewing and raised her pert, triangular face. Shreds of glove hung from her teeth.

  “Wretched mongrel!” cried Ada’s aunt Julia, looming on the carriage seat opposite. Her trumpetlike voice filled the carriage. She held up the mate of the mangled glove.

  Of course Ella had mauled Aunt Julia’s glove, Ada thought. To say the two had not taken to each other would be a woeful understatement. Why had her aunt removed her gloves? “She is not a mongrel,” Ada couldn’t help replying. “She’s a Pomeranian, like the old queen’s dogs.”

  “And the worst trained animal I’ve ever encountered,” said her aunt. “Overindulged, unintelligent. I don’t know why anyone wants a lapdog.”

  “She is trained.” Ada knew she shouldn’t argue, but this wasn’t fair. “She never chews my things. She’s bored. She doesn’t like being shut up in a carriage all day.”

  “The only thing on which we agree,” said her aunt. “I can’t think why I consented to come on this quixotic journey of yours.”

  She’d come because she enjoyed thwarting her younger brother, Ada’s father, Ada thought. She’d taken advantage of that.

  “I feel we should be returning to school at this time of year,” said Sarah Moran, sitting next to Ada, in a clear bid to change the subject. Sarah was always a peacemaker. “It’s so odd that we’re finished with all that.”

  “To very little purpose as far as I can see,” said Aunt Julia. “Ada cannot even speak Italian.” Her gaze raked Ada from head to toe.

  She could practically feel the critical scrutiny, Ada thought, like a beam of light flashing over her. She reviewed the image the mirror had shown her when she dressed this morning. Her brown hair was neatly coiled. Her round face had been freshly washed then, her cheeks rosy from the towel. The eyebrows that either gave her face character or wrecked any claim to beauty, depending on the observer’s point of view, brooded over her dark eyes. Her determined chin made its customary statement.

  She looked down. Her blue pelisse was plain, as was the hat on her head. Indeed, Ada knew she still dressed like a schoolgirl, even though she had recently turned eighteen.

  Some girls in her neighborhood had gone to London last season and returned with modish clothes and dashing haircuts and superior attitudes. She had ambitions in that direction herself, but she had to make this journey first, had to clear the slate of the past before she could enjoy herself again. She’d convinced her three best friends to come along. It hadn’t taken a great deal of persuasion. They were curious, too.

  “If you think to get by on a pretty face, you are a sapskull,” said her aunt.

  Ada suppressed a sigh. She had not been thinking that. She never would. Why would Aunt Julia say so? She reminded herself that this expedition wouldn’t have been possible without her aunt’s chaperonage. This truth didn’t make her an easy companion, however.

  They’d had to hire two carriages because her aunt was such a large person. And then Ada’s friends had, secretly, drawn lots to see who would ride with the formidable lady. Sarah had lost, and so she was with them here. Charlotte and Harriet rode in the other chaise with Aunt Julia’s grand lady’s maid.

  Well, there were always obstacles to be overcome in planning an expedition, thought Ada. Desperation had carried her through. She’d managed to cajole four sets of parents, recruit Aunt Julia, and set them all on the road. She would continue to manage when they arrived at the home of Delia’s brother, the duke.

  Ada felt her cheeks flush. She turned to gaze at the scenery once again. No one could accuse her of having made friends with Delia in order to
scrape an acquaintance with her brother. She hadn’t met Peter Rathbone until much later, when he’d brought Delia to visit Ada’s home last year. He’d stepped out of the post chaise, handed Delia down, turned to greet the Grandisons, and somehow shaken Ada to the core. A tall, slender young man. Not conventionally handsome, with his long, oval face, straight brows and prominent cheekbones, his dark hair a bit long. But when he’d looked at Ada, she’d felt as if she was falling into his brown eyes. She’d actually been dizzy for a moment. That had never happened to her before.

  He’d stayed only long enough to see Delia settled. They’d had no private conversation. But Ada had felt it whenever he was nearby. Her whole body had reacted to his presence. And his departure had left her curious and wistful.

  Afterward, she’d found herself bringing the young duke into conversations with her friend. She’d hinted to Delia that she would enjoy being invited to Alberdene. And there she’d met with resistance, making Ada wonder about the Rathbones. Somehow, it was only then that she realized how little Delia talked about her family. Her home, yes; Delia had waxed lyrical about Alberdene at the least opportunity. But very rarely its inhabitants. How had they not noticed? The rest of them chattered about their families all the time at school.

  And then came Delia’s death, a shocking rupture, a dreadful tragedy. The sadness of it would be with Ada all her life. And yet it also created a link between Ada and Delia’s brother, didn’t it? They would share that grief forevermore. Ada imagined gazing into his fathomless eyes, taking his hand. No, he would take hers. That was better. And then—

  “Oh, look,” said Sarah, pointing out the window.

  Ada obliged and saw a stag standing on top of a ridge, gazing down at them. As she watched, it sprang away.

  “Majestic,” said Sarah, who relished such sights.