Never Deny a Duke
Page 4
“I cannot do that.”
He sighed with deep exasperation. “You have no proof other than a surname that is so common as to be meaningless to your claim.”
“I will find more.”
“How? It all happened almost a hundred years ago.”
“I will find it. My grandfather was not a fool or dishonest. If he wrote to the king, he knew he was the heir. I will find whatever he found that convinced him of that.” She sat again, firmly. “You are the one who should give it up.”
He paced forward and glared down at her. “There is no way that will happen. I am Brentworth. We do not hand over parts of our estate easily, least of all to women with dubious stories about unfounded inheritances.” He made the vaguest bow. “I will take my leave now, lest we have a row. Good day to you.”
“I thought a row was what we were having already.”
With a quelling glance in her direction, he began walking up the garden path.
“Don’t you fear being known as a cheat?” she called after him.
He paused long enough to face her. “Don’t you fear being known as a fraud?”
Chapter Four
The woman was impossible. Irritating as hell.
Eric fumed about the conversation with Davina MacCallum while he rode back to Mayfair. She had been damned sure of her story, considering she had no proof at all. Anyone else would have at least hesitated before all but declaring war. But not Miss MacCallum.
Was she a fraud? Eric had met a few in his day, and they usually showed the same confidence. They had to. Enough questions would be raised that it hardly helped to raise them first.
The notion that she might be perpetuating a bold, audacious swindle had provoked an odd reaction while he was in the garden. Anger, mostly, and—disappointment. The combination resulted in a sensation that discomfited him. What did he care if she was shown to be dishonest? Yet something in him rebelled at the idea.
He never became angry. Well, rarely. Yet here he was riding through London with a jaw so tight his teeth were grinding. He kept seeing her sitting there, the dappled sunlight making patterns on her short locks, calmly explaining how her family should receive those lands.
The English army did not kill children. But he could not say that with confidence, and she knew it. He had not been there, and who knew what happened in every case of heirs of rebels. And whether it ever happened or not, what mattered was what others believed might have happened.
Northumberland back then had been full of Jacobites who supported the Scottish revolt. Catholics mostly. It had been a center of significant rebellion on its own in those years, and many of its own sons had fallen at Culloden. If one wanted to send a child to sanctuary, that would be one place to choose.
Damnation, her story at least held a certain logical consistency. But it was only that, a story. A story and a letter from a king half mad and on his way to delirium.
He cursed under his breath. She was going to be trouble, maybe for years. Just looking at her he could tell she would never give this up. Why would she? She had nothing to lose, and much to gain.
It would have to be those lands, too. He never thought about that Scottish estate if he could avoid it. Even now, while he paced his horse through town, memories wanted to take over his mind and throw him back in time to wallow again in guilt and remorse.
He escaped that dark cloud by chewing over what he knew and what she did not know but claimed to know. He ruminated over that conversation with Haversham. By the time he reached Mayfair he concluded that the real danger did not come from Miss MacCallum but from the king who would be anxious to protect his name and honor. That caused him to ride to a house other than his own.
The butler took his card even though they knew each other well. “His Grace is not at home, Your Grace.”
“I am calling on the duchess, not Stratton.”
“I will see if Her Grace is at home then.”
He waited in the drawing room. He assumed Clara would decide she was at home, out of curiosity if nothing else.
By anyone’s calculations, Clara was the last woman Stratton would have married. Their families were old enemies, and it turned out Stratton could lay the blame for unforgivable sins at their doorstep. Yet he and Clara had fallen in love, against all odds.
Their union represented the triumph of optimism and pleasure over the obligations of blood and duty. Being a realist Eric had not held much hope for the longevity of their great love, but here they were today, still smitten like new lovers. Which was probably why Stratton allowed his wife a level of independence unusual even for duchesses. Not that Clara would have it any other way.
She indeed was curious enough to receive him, although he had to wait almost half an hour for her to enter the drawing room.
“You caught me unawares, Brentworth, and it is not a day on which I receive. I had to rush to dress for you, and it took forever to get my hair to look right.”
Her chestnut hair had been twisted and curled expertly. “Perhaps you should cut it. I expect short locks are fairly easy to dress.”
“Excuse me?” She gave him a suspicious look, as if he toyed with her.
“Never mind. You could have come down in whatever you wore. I am a friend and we do not have to stand on ceremony.”
Another suspicious look, one that caused her eyes to appear hooded. “How generous of you. As if you would receive me in a banyan.”
He had to smile at that, along with her.
She strolled to a divan and invited him to sit. “I doubt this is the typical social call, so forgive me if I ask what it is you want.”
“I am wounded. Why would you think I want something?”
“Because you have never paid a call on me alone in all the time we have known each other. If my husband is not here, neither are you.”
He wished he had been more careful about that. It had been a stupid negligence.
“Goodness, Brentworth, you almost appear uncomfortable. Your need must be great indeed. Out with it, and I will count in your favor that you asked me directly, instead of having my husband do it for you.”
“I will be frank. I have reason to think you wrote to the king regarding Miss MacCallum.”
“How do you know?”
“Haversham.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Just as well it was handed off to him. He owed my father for interceding in a matter when he was a young man, so he will do right if he can.”
“Right by whom?”
“Why, by Miss MacCallum, of course.”
“So you know about her claim?”
“Not the particulars. I only know she was promised attention to a problem with a legacy and that promise had not been kept. That is disgraceful. Kings can’t lie about such things.”
She did not know the facts of the matter. He debated what to tell her.
Clara, unfortunately, was very sharp and her mind was right with his on that point. “How did Haversham come to tell you about any of this?”
“He sought my advice on a part of it.” Not a lie.
“At least they are finally doing as was promised and investigating her claim. I hope you can help. She is alone in the world now, since her father died. She keeps body and soul together by being a tutor for girls, but who knows how long she will find such situations? Eventually she will have to take service as a governess, I suspect, and that would be a waste.” She ended her diversion into Miss MacCallum with a smile that then firmed. “And how can I help you help Haversham?”
“I have a favor to ask.”
“You almost choked on that. I expect it is rare for you to ask a favor of anyone. Well, let’s hear it.”
“It would be best for Miss MacCallum if her matter was handled discreetly.”
“Best for the king, you mean.”
“Nothing good will come from this turning into drawing room gossip.”
“Brentworth, did you come here to ask, as a favor, that I keep silent about this?”
&
nbsp; “I would never insult you by implying you gossip. I am more concerned with that journal of yours.”
To say she sat up and took notice would be an understatement. “The journal? We do not write about squabbles over inheritances. Unless—ohhhhhh. There is a story here, you mean. A scandal or something that could feed the gossips for a year.”
“Hardly that interesting. However, I am asking you as a favor to desist in any inclinations that you may develop regarding the entire affair.”
Her excitement dissolved into a pout. “It is cruel of you to dangle this then snatch it away. I expect if I do not agree to this favor you will then ask my husband for the favor, and I will in turn have to hear his petition.”
“I would rather not.”
“Which means you still might.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why do I think you are not doing this to help Haversham and the king but yourself in some way?”
He gazed back passively. Innocently.
“You have your favor. With one condition. Should at some point this be ripe for publication, Parnassus gets to do the story first. There are times when nothing else but all the facts will clear the air and silence the lies.”
“Condition accepted.” He stood. “Thank you.”
She rose too and walked with him to the door. “It was an easy favor to grant. Now, of course, you owe me one. That should be fun.”
* * *
Davina did not join Mr. Hume in the library after Brentworth left. Instead she took a long walk and released her anger in long, purposeful strides. Her path took her far afield, and as a result when she returned to the house on Saint Anne’s Lane, the family had already sat to dinner. She entered the chamber as quietly as she could and slid into her chair.
During her entire walk she had thought about her meeting with the duke. She had to admit that while he did not frighten her, she understood why some women found his attention discomforting. His presence and attention carried no real danger but rather a compelling but subtle vitality that was hard to name. Perhaps it was called power. She could see some people becoming tongue-tied when that gaze leveled at them.
Mrs. Hume sipped her soup and Nora only glanced in her direction before reaching for a roll from the breadbasket. It was Mr. Hume who made a display of noticing her arrival. He paused midsentence of his description of a political meeting. His thick eyebrows, copper-colored like his hair, rose a fraction over his blue eyes. The mustache he wore like a badge of his radical ideas moved above the small pucker of his lips.
He waited for the housekeeper to bring her some soup before speaking again.
“You were gone a long while, Miss MacCallum.” He removed his pocket watch to look at the time, as if he did not know it already. “A good three hours.”
“I took a long turn through town. I felt the need for exercise.”
“Not fitting,” Mrs. Hume muttered. The old woman did not like Davina and made no pretense on the matter. She did not approve the unusual terms Davina had demanded before taking this position. As a result she often scolded when Davina displayed the independence that had been at the top of her list of necessary accommodations.
“How did you spend your afternoon, Nora? Miss MacCallum’s absence left you on your own.”
“I visited my friend Anna,” Nora said. “She has a new doll she carries everywhere. If I were younger I might be envious, because it is French. But I think it silly to carry around a doll when one is thirteen.”
“Better a doll than a book too complex for your young head,” Mrs. Hume said.
“Mrs. Hume, I was brought into the household to encourage the complexity you decry.”
Mrs. Hume’s snowy face turned pink. “That I should have to suffer such impertinence from a governess . . .”
“She was hired to be a tutor, Mother. Not a governess. She is not being impertinent in explaining the truth.”
Davina gave Mr. Hume a look of gratitude. It could not be easy for him to disagree with his mother, especially about how and why the tutor did not behave like a normal servant.
Face red now, Mrs. Hume excused herself. Her exit would have been dramatic except that her departure could not be abrupt. Afflicted with bad bones like many elderly women, she required aid in standing and a cane to walk, both of which Davina jumped up to supply.
“May I leave too?” Nora asked.
“You may,” Mr. Hume said.
“You can study your Latin verbs,” Davina added. “We will drill tomorrow.”
Nora neither groaned nor objected. A biddable girl, she seemed to enjoy her studies. Davina wondered how long that would last. Soon fashion and young men would turn her head, and common notions of what a girl should know and need not know would influence her.
Davina ate the cook’s stewed fowl. Mr. Hume drank his wine. His long fingers gently held the stem of the goblet as if it was made of crystal instead of pewter. Davina waited for Mr. Hume to broach the topic begging to be addressed.
“Did Brentworth indeed come about the legacy?” he finally asked.
“Yes.” She sometimes regretted informing Mr. Hume of her reason for accepting his offer to serve as tutor to his daughter. She had debated whether to even take the situation. For one thing, she suspected that Mr. Hume, whom she had met socially in Edinburgh, was a little too interested in her in ways she was not interested in him.
At their meeting where she accepted the charge, she had stated her reason. I need to go to London to petition the Crown, and that is where you live much of the year.
Regrettably, Mr. Hume had concluded that the truth might serve other ambitions in addition to any he harbored regarding a romance with her. His interest had expanded to her history, plans and fortune.
“What do you think of him?” he asked.
“Proud. Well aware of his consequence and standing.” She paused. “Intelligent. I was not expecting that. I wrongly assumed he would be lazy, rich, and spoiled, like a character in a satirical print.”
“The English aristocracy is not entirely composed of mental laggards given only to self-indulgence. Mostly, but not totally. I did warn you that Brentworth would be formidable.”
Mr. Hume liked to think he was her adviser in her quest. He had expectations of political gains that were not part of her own goals, and they kept his nose a little too close to her business. For Davina, this mission was entirely personal. She had plans for that property. She wanted to turn that big house into a place where medical help could be given to the rural people her father had cared for when he could. It would be a way of continuing his work, and his memory, as well as giving her own life a purpose it had lost when he passed away.
“Any duke is formidable, sir. This was a superior formidable, however. He reveals nothing.” He would never narrow his eyes like you do when calculating his next move. He would never show his hand.
He nodded in acknowledgment of her perceptions. “Does he know what you are up to?”
“Our conversation in the garden proved he knows all of it. He thinks I am a fraud. That I have made it all up. I should have waited until I had more evidence, I suppose. Only I thought the evidence that my grandfather sent would be all that was needed. Instead, it can’t even be found.”
“Or so they say.”
“If they say it, it is as good as true.” She considered Mr. Hume, who sat there looking sympathetic. “I don’t think I will progress if I wait on Mr. Haversham. I need to present my case to someone else who has the king’s ear. Can you help me obtain an audience with someone close to the king?”
Mr. Hume pondered her request, but she knew his influence probably did not extend that far. Not only was he an MP from Scotland, but also he was known as a radical one who continued to oppose the Union and who spoke out loud and long about the trouble there a few years ago, the so-called Radical War. The court was not likely to do him any favors.
“I can see,” he said. “You must know that I will do whatever I can to help you. We will find a way.” His blue eyes warmed.
He was not an unattractive man. His fashionably cropped curls held an unusual dark copper hue rarely seen outside Scotland. His eyes could be appealing when they did not express what they did right now. He was not a big, bulky Scot, but rather slender and wiry, so he cut a figure that current fashions favored.
She liked him as a person. She simply wished he did not think about her the way he was thinking this instant.
She excused herself. Once in her chamber she settled at her writing desk and penned a list of all the kinds of evidence it might be worth looking for.
Chapter Five
Davina bumped her way through the crowded, narrow street. Goods poured out the shop doors and tradesmen could be seen working their crafts behind some of the windows. People stopped to browse or buy, and others hurried along on their way home for dinner.
She kept to the side, watching the signs dangling overhead, looking for one of a cobbler. Mr. Hume had sent her here, to talk to an old man named Mr. Jacobson, who occasionally attended the political meetings he frequented. Mr. Hume thought this man had lived his youthful years in Northumberland in the region where she had been born. Possibly he would know something of use to her.
That Mr. Hume had not accompanied her implied this would probably not be a successful outing. She suspected he had given her this man’s name and direction in order to appear helpful.
She spied a sign with a boot up ahead. Perhaps this Mr. Jacobson was not a cobbler but a bootmaker. She squeezed past a cart, suffered its donkey’s strong odor, and ducked through the doorway.
Boots in various stages of creation lined one wall, and leather hung from another one. An old man, big and pink-faced and with cropped gray hair, straddled a bench near the window, nailing the bottom of a boot. He squinted as if he could use spectacles. He did not appear to hear her enter.