A Woman of True Honor
True Gentlemen Book Eight
Grace Burrowes
A Woman of True Honor Copyright © 2020 by Grace Burrowes
All rights reserved.
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Print ISBN: 9781941419946
Ebook ISBN: 9781941419939
To the many, many, many good guys.
You are the real heroes.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
To my dear readers
Excerpt—A Lady’s Dream Come True
Excerpt—A Duke by Any Other Name
Chapter One
A man raised with six brothers should have been impossible to ambush. Valerian Dorning’s excuse was that the typical fraternal skirmish involved a pair of fists, and those, he’d become adept at dodging.
Miss Emily Pepper’s weapon of choice was a pair of lips—hers—and luscious, soft lips they were too. Valerian’s body had no inclination whatsoever to escape her fire and, had surrender been honorable, he would have gone peaceably into captivity after at least fifteen minutes of heroic struggle.
His gentlemanly honor, alas for him, was yet in evidence. “Miss Pepper…” he murmured as she tucked in closer. “Emily...”
She was a well-formed young woman, which Valerian noted in less genteel terms every time he clapped eyes upon her. Now, purely in defense of his sanity, he laid his hands on her person. Her biceps seemed a safe enough place to grasp her, except that she twined her arms around Valerian’s neck, and his hands landed on the sides of her ribs.
Her breasts—more luscious softness—were mere inches from his touch, while his self-restraint was threatening to gallop off into the next county.
“Miss Pepper, we must not.”
Though he did. For one glorious, demented moment, Valerian kissed her back, reveling in her blatant desire and in the sheer perfection of her body pressed to his. He dreamed of Emily Pepper, he longed for her in the darkness, and he subjected himself to long, cold swims in the millpond trying to exorcise her from his imagination.
This utter folly masquerading as a kiss would make Valerian’s nights only more tormented. Miss Pepper’s hands roaming his back conveyed equal parts eagerness and determination, and when a fellow had never been particularly sought out by anybody, much less by a comely female with a lively mind, a wonderful sense of humor, and a fiercely kind heart, he was easily felled.
Her questing hands wandered south, giving Valerian’s bum an exquisite squeeze.
“Miss Pepper.” Do that again. “We must not forget ourselves.”
She did it again, and Valerian forgot whose royal arse sat upon the British throne. When she clutched at his backside, she brought her womanly abundance into greater proximity to Valerian’s chest, and the battle to deny arousal became an utter rout.
He stepped back lest he have to depart the picnic with his hat held over his falls.
Miss Pepper kept her arms around his neck, her breath coming in soft pants that sent Valerian’s wayward imagination in all the wrong directions. What she lacked in subtlety, she made up for in dearness.
“I have bungled even this,” she said, gaze fixed on his cravat. “You are trying not to laugh, aren’t you?”
If anything could drag Valerian’s attention from the rise and fall of Miss Pepper’s charms, it was the note of misery in her voice.
“I beg your pardon?” Why must her hair be such a soft, caress-able brown? Why must her fingers stroking his nape bring poetry to mind?
“I cannot even manage a stolen kiss with a gentleman bachelor. My dancing is a horror, my laughter too boisterous. I will never be accepted even in Dorsetshire.”
Valerian took her hands in his and managed another half step back. “You make Dorset sound like a province of Lower Canada. I assure you, your neighbors all hold you in very high regard.” They held her father’s money in high regard. From what Valerian could tell, the local gentry weren’t quite sure what to make of Miss Pepper herself.
Fools.
“I will not attend the summer assembly.” She dropped his hands and turned so she faced the woods that backed up to the garden of the Summerton estate. “I refuse to be made a laughingstock.”
“Nobody will dare laugh at you.” Unless, of course, she fell on her pretty fundament. Valerian had suffered the indignity of a public tumble himself, having been tripped by some brother or other, and he well knew the capacity for merriment that the publican’s punch could inspire.
Also, the blinding headaches.
“They won’t laugh at me to my face. Shall we take a stroll to the stream, Mr. Dorning?”
Wandering the woods together was not quite proper, except that other guests were also enjoying the shady paths winding beneath the trees. The occasion was meant to feature the out of doors, and the estate where Valerian’s brother dwelled with his new wife was beautiful in any season.
Valerian offered his arm, Miss Pepper curled her hand into the crook of his elbow, and they set off at a sedate meander.
“I will miss you if you don’t attend the assembly.” A partial truth. Valerian would not miss watching every bachelor, widower, and squire stand up with her. He would, though, miss seeing her smile at all the babies and children. He might also miss hearing her laugh at some lout’s attempt at humor, especially if he were the lout amusing her.
Miss Pepper had a genuine laugh, one that conveyed warm-heartedness and a convivial spirit. She also had a temper, and Valerian liked that almost as much as he liked her sense of humor. Too many women pretended they never had grounds for offense, and too many men were content to believe the ladies’ fictions.
“You are being gallant,” she said. “If I’m not at the assembly, the general opinion will be that I think I’m too good for my neighbors’ company. I am getting off on the wrong foot with them, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
Earlier in the year, Emily’s father, Osgood Pepper, had purchased a local estate sunk in debt. She was overseeing refurbishment of the manor house, one of many properties she would inherit upon her father’s death.
“The local folk don’t know what to do about you either.” The uproar in Valerian’s breeches was subsiding to a familiar ache, and turning his mind to Miss Pepper’s social situation helped reduce the ache to a pointless yearning. “Country life comes at a slower pace than what you’re used to in Town. Here your fortunes won’t be decided in the space of a few Wednesday-night gatherings at Almack’s. You have time to ease into the community.”
“You’re saying if I don’t attend the summer assembly, I can simply show up at the autumn gathering?”
“Or winter, or next spring… Though the summer gathering is in some ways the best.”
“Why?”
“Because the engagements are announced at the spring assembly, typically, and summer is when the courting couples preen and prance about. The weather is usually pleasant enough that most people walk both to and from the gathering, and the whole business has a more relaxed, congenial air. I do hope you’ll come.”
As one of the many Dorning offspring, Valerian had been raised with certain expectations. First his father and now his brother held the title Earl of Casriel, making the Dornings the ranking family in the neighborhood. Dorning Hall entertained its neighbors at a summer fête and a Yuletide open house each year, and the Dorning brothers were expected to stand up with the wallflowers at any event that featured dancing.
Hospitality was expected of a Dorning, even a penniless bachelor Dorning. Especially of such a fellow, in fact, for it was among few valuables he had to give.
They reached the stream, which today ran a placid course between grassy banks. “Why did you kiss me, Miss Pepper?”
She took the bench that some obliging soul had placed by the water a century or two ago. “Why did I try to kiss you?”
“I’d say the venture was a success. May I join you?” The bench sat in shade, and the view across the stream was a sunny pasture on Dorning land. Mares cropped grass, tails whisking at the occasional fly. Foals napped at their mamas’ feet or frisked about with each other like enormous milk-drunk kittens.
“Please do have a seat,” Miss Pepper said, arranging her skirts. “A kiss is not a success when the gentleman’s primary reaction is dismay. I should apologize.”
“Please don’t. I’m simply out of practice in the kissing department. My dancing is much more reliable.”
He’d made her smile, and that was… that was worth all the thwarted yearning in Dorset.
“I don’t know how to kiss, and I don’t know the country dances,” she said. “Papa’s finishing schools and governesses made sure I learned the ballroom dances, just as I have passable French and can mince about in a fancy riding habit without tripping over my hems. That education is inadequate for the challenges I face now.”
Miss Pepper wasn’t much of a horsewoman. Valerian had seen that for himself, and her ballroom dancing qualified as passable at best.
“Dances can be learned,” he said, “as can the equestrian arts that figure so prominently in rural life. You picked up French, after all.”
“I did not pick up French, Mr. Dorning. I gathered it, one word at a time, over years of hard labor at the hands of experts. Most of my governesses concluded that the daughter of a cit could not be very bright, and I came to agree with them, at least as regards languages.”
Why did you kiss me? He could not ask her that again, though neither could he explain the sheer nonsense that came out of his mouth.
“I hold dance classes every Wednesday evening for the four weeks before any assembly. The young people like an excuse to stand up with one another, and few of us want to attempt our first waltz on a crowded dance floor.” He did not dare inform her that he charged for those classes on a donation basis.
Nobody was obligated to pay anything, but those who could afford to did put a few coppers in the jar. He needed the money, though not desperately enough to insist on payment when many of his neighbors were one bad harvest away from needing it more.
“You suggest I make a limited spectacle of myself?”
“I suggest you have some fun with our younger neighbors, who tend to be less hidebound and serious. Come a bit early, and I’ll get you started. One can practice the waltz with a single partner, and other dances require only four couples. The country dances, though, often form lines, and that means learning them in company.”
“You won’t let me fall on my backside?”
Her question was endearingly in earnest. “No guarantees, Miss Pepper. Anybody can take a tumble—I have myself—but I do promise to help you up.”
“You have fallen on the dance floor?”
“Went sprawling before the entire company. My brother Hawthorne gave me a hand up”—Hawthorne’s boot might have precipitated Valerian’s fall, purely by accident, of course—“swatted at me a few times, and gave me a shove in the direction of my partner, who like the rest of the group, was laughing uproariously. I made it a point to conquer the dance floor thereafter.” And the drawing room and any battlefield where a man could be felled by manners or deportment.
“Very well,” she said, rising. “I will join you for these tutorials, and we shall see what progress can be made, if any.”
They ambled back to the garden, where the buffet had been set out, and still Valerian had no answer to his question—why had she kissed him?
“Shall I come for you on Wednesday afternoon?” he asked.
“Please. My driving skills are as wanting as my dancing abilities. I will look forward to our next meeting, Mr. Dorning.” She bobbed an abrupt curtsey and left him standing by the fountain.
“Margaret likes her.” That comment came from Valerian’s brother Hawthorne, who was the host for the day’s gathering. “Margaret has a very discerning nature. Witness, she married my humble and handsome self.”
“When will you stop sneaking up on an unsuspecting brother?”
“When my unsuspecting brother stops focusing so intently on a lady’s departure that he becomes oblivious to all else, though I grant you, Miss Pepper has a comely form.”
Hawthorne, the tallest and most muscular of the Dorning siblings, was a farmer at heart. He might have been admiring a yearling heifer’s well-sprung barrel, so dispassionate was his assessment of Emily’s attributes. When it came to his darling Margaret and the two little girls he was raising with her, though, he was anything but dispassionate.
“The lady needs a few pointers regarding country dances,” Valerian said. “I am happy to provide them.”
“You look happy.” Hawthorne slung a muscular arm across Valerian’s shoulders. “You look overjoyed, awash in ebullience, a testament to—oof.”
Valerian had elbowed him hard in the breadbasket, which had the desired effect of dislodging Hawthorne’s arm and the agreeable result of improving Valerian’s mood.
“Marriage has made you soft, Thorne.”
“Softhearted,” Hawthorne replied, gaze going to his smiling, strawberry-blonde wife.
Spare me from besotted siblings. “I will leave you to your wedded bliss and thank you for a pleasant gathering. Please make my farewells to Margaret, would you?”
“Make them yourself. What is so urgent that you must be among the first to leave?”
Valerian wanted to study up on his country dances, though he knew them all by heart, and he wanted time to think. Had Emily Pepper’s kiss been simply another attempt to acquire a needed skill?
A plausible explanation and a very lowering thought.
“I do occasionally have matters to see to, Hawthorne. My manuscript wants polishing, for example. My thanks again for a lovely afternoon.” Valerian made a perfectly correct bow and sauntered away, offering parting words to a few neighbors as he gained the path that led to Dorning Hall. When he was safely into the woods, and thus out of view of the gathering, he crossed the stream and turned his steps along the track that led to the millpond.
Even on this gorgeous summer afternoon, the water would be frigid, or at least it had been that morning.
* * *
“Mr. Dorning said he’d teach me to dance.” Emily offered this explanation to Briggs, who as usual sat embroidering by the parlor window.
“You know how to dance, miss.” A neutral statement of fact that somehow conveyed a world of censure. Briggs had been with Emily for years, and they had been long years from Emily’s perspective.
“I know some dances, true,” Emily said, for it was always best to agree with Briggs where possible. “I know the ballroom dances one needs at Almack’s.” Not that Emily had been admitted to that great citadel of snobbery. “Other dances are popular in the countryside.”
“A lot of hopping
about, clapping, and twirling,” Briggs said. “Not very dignified, if you ask me.”
Which Emily had not. “I can attend without you.” Emily pretended to rummage in her workbasket, though she was heartily sick of embroidery, lace, and knitting. A lady of the manor was expected to ply her needle for the beautification of said manor, apparently, until that lady was barmy with boredom. “I’m sure Tobias and Caleb will want to go.”
“You think a pair of glorified London clerks will bother with a rural assembly?”
“They won’t have a choice when I ask them to accompany me. They are gentlemen.”
Briggs sniffed and snapped off a thread.
Tobias Granger and Caleb Booth were Papa’s left and right hand, respectively. They had worked for him since their boyhoods and had stuck by him through every tribulation. Emily was certain they had generous bequests in Papa’s will, and their loyalty to his various businesses—and to Papa himself—was beyond question.
To Briggs, however, Tobias and Caleb handled money, albeit indirectly, which put them in all but trade and made them only nominal gentlemen. She had been born into modest wealth, and clung to the standards of her upbringings long after that wealth had been squandered.
“Those two pester your father the livelong day with their silly business. It’s as if nobody explained to them how the king’s post works.”
“They are still in the office with him?” The evening meal approached, though Papa would have taken a tray at his desk if Emily had permitted it.
“The three of them have been at it since you went larking off to yon picnic this morning.”
Emily closed her workbasket gently. “I am at present the female head of this household, Briggs. I am expected to socialize with our neighbors. I’ll see you at supper.” Why Briggs had not chased Caleb and Tobias out of Papa’s office, Emily did not know. Very likely, Briggs was protesting Emily’s decision to attend the picnic, which was ridiculous. Briggs had declined to accompany her, pleading hay fever, when in fact the true ailment was likely disdain for rural pastimes.
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