Proper crimson.
It should have been him.
But he’d never played the game right—if it was to be him, he should have pressed for announcements to be made. Then again, it wasn’t in his nature to secure things so fully. He knew that if they had done that, she would have had no way to break an engagement, really. Not without risking the loss of any credibility and respectability she had. Since he was a duke, she might have been considered mad.
But no, he could not know with full certainty whether it would have prevented all of this.
“Sir?” Lee said, when he was close enough to be heard.
Sir Gregory turned. “Your Grace.” He waited for Lee to speak first, holding his hat in his gloved hands and fidgeting with its brim.
“I won’t demure; I know why you have come here.”
“I have been courting Miss Driffield,” he replied, eyeing Lee.
“I have heard.”
“I would have been surprised if you hadn’t, for we have been to a few of the same—”
“I do not doubt it, but it is that which I need to speak to you about,” Lee said.
You could have been dancing with her this whole time, you bastard, he chastised himself. How obnoxious it was that this man before him, this perfectly respectable and bland person, had spent time with her that he hadn’t.
“Oh?” Unless Sir Gregory was very unobservant, he must know what Lee was leading up to saying. Or know vaguely why he’d been pulled aside. Roderick lingered unobtrusively nearby, but Lee knew that he could hear everything.
An obvious sound of a carriage coming toward the house jarred them all. Roderick reacted first, as he was expected to do.
Because everything about this afternoon had gone perfectly so far, it was Mr. and Mrs. Driffield Roderick greeted at the door. From the look on his face, Lee surmised that Sir Gregory would have paid good money for the ability to become invisible. He needn’t have worried, however. Mrs. Driffield would have no eyes for anyone other than Lee.
He knew exactly what was coming next.
Mrs. Driffield’s head swiveled tightly toward him. She asked, without hesitation and with the most severe of demeanors, “Why would you come here, Your Grace?”
Chapter Fourteen
He couldn’t stop a groan, and she was on him for the uncouth sound of frustration in a flash.
She must have had ears like a cat’s, for even his stifled groans were not louder than most others’ mumbles.
And even his limited body of experience with this woman had not led him to believe that she would ever really give him the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully, if she is to be my mother-in-law, we can have a new start. He couldn’t exactly fault her for her hostility toward him. He had not earned her trust, and nothing she did, despite her overbearing ways and magpie tendencies, seemed to come from a place of true maliciousness. She did appear to want Teddie to be safe. Although her efforts were overly enthusiastic, that was probably what motivated them.
“I know you must think of us as little more than tradespeople who are beneath your notice, Your Grace, but never let it be said that I do not protect my own,” she said. Then, on almost the same breath, she addressed Sir Gregory. “Sir Gregory. I trust your visit was pleasant.”
“Ah, yes, Mrs. Driffield,” he said. “I thank you. It was.” He was nearly hopping from foot to foot in his zeal to leave the house. Or to comprehend what, exactly, was taking place, thought Lee. Meanwhile, Roderick was amidst his employers and their awkward guests, trying to see to hats and gloves to little avail. He hovered like a butterfly trapped under a glass.
No one was actually paying him any mind. All eyes save his were on Lee.
“You still have not answered my question, Lord Valencourt.”
Vexed beyond imagining, Lee said to Mrs. Driffield, “Madam, I have come to properly ask for Teddie’s hand.”
Hesitating before he added the single but impactful word, he said, “Again.”
That made Sir Gregory nearly hop with alarm rather than impatience.
Mrs. Driffield, stunned at either his forthright reply or the use of Teddie’s pet name, scowled at Lee. He stood there and accepted it as a toll, a payment that had to be given, but did not shrink from her ire.
“Again?” echoed Sir Gregory.
Staying just near his wife, Mr. Driffield was visibly growing more cross as the moments passed. Lee could not judge him for it. He supposed that he should be counting himself lucky that he hadn’t been castigated for bedding the man’s daughter outside of marriage. He felt, somehow, that even his elevated status wouldn’t have saved him from that kind of retaliation.
Not that Mr. Driffield looked like the popular idea of a bombastic father. He was stout and ginger.
And Lee knew that what he would have said in response, not that most fathers wanted to hear a defense of those sorts of things: it was freely and lovingly done. That was more than many men could say.
As Lee was considering what to say to Teddie—who was so close, just a few rooms away, that it was agonizing to wait—Mr. Driffield snapped, “Yes, Sir Gregory. Again. His Grace apparently wishes to ask my daughter for her hand in marriage once again.” It was easy to conjecture that Sir Gregory was still trying to work out how he was courting Teddie if another man, no less a duke, was already courting her. His pale face was flickering with activity as, perhaps for the first time in a great while, things were making proper sense to him.
However, Lee did not get the sense that he was a tremendously aggressive or greedy man. Above all, he appeared hurt.
He said, “Then why was I led to believe…” but it trailed away to nothing.
In that moment, it made sense to Lee that Teddie might have been trying to cut her losses by continuing to be amenable to Sir Gregory’s presence in her parents’ home. It ensured that at the end of this season she would have a husband and be out from under her mother’s thumb, while also still giving Lee a chance should he choose to take it. But he’d never really come to her, never really bothered to try to explain himself. He had behaved abhorrently. Absently, thinking while Sir Gregory made vague noises of confusion and mild chagrin, he rubbed at his mouth.
The problem was not just what he hadn’t said. It was what he’d said.
He needed, somehow, to prove that he’d thought about his own situation enough to address it without using her resources as part of the solution.
While Sir Gregory struggled to form the proper phrasing for his finer feelings, Lee turned to him and said, “I do apologize, Sir Gregory, for the upset.” He saw now that any of his own feelings of anger or dislike for this man were rooted in pure possessiveness. “Our engagement was never formalized. You could not have known.”
“Or made at all public,” said Mrs. Driffield, rather acridly.
“And Miss Driffield did verbally end things with me,” Lee said. “You have nothing to fret over. None of your own behavior was dishonorable.”
“But now, you wish to… see if she will… recant what she said,” said Sir Gregory.
“I do, yes.”
In all of his time amongst actors, he’d never seen such strong hope dashed from someone’s face in such a clear manner. The man’s pathos would have inspired Sarah Siddons’ next role. But Lee didn’t have the time to judge whether Sir Gregory was mourning the loss of potential wealth, or if he actually liked Teddie enough to court her out of the potential for love. It didn’t matter, so long as he still had a chance with Teddie. He was starting to believe that he might. Hope was a welcome, if bizarre, sensation.
Sir Gregory’s jaw worked slightly, small muscles shifting in his face. “Very good, Your Grace,” he said. “Might I make my goodbyes to Miss Driffield?” It was said without any crumb of self-pity, and that was what made Lee feel sorry for him. Just a little. Naturally, not enough to abandon his cause. But he was burdened with an empathetic nature.
“Of course you may, Sir Gregory.”
Hissing like an indignant goose, Mrs
. Driffield said, “Your Grace, you cannot grant permission in—”
“Mrs. Driffield, that is quite enough,” said Mr. Driffield, in a rare display of iron that surprised even Sir Gregory.
He, Lee, and Mrs. Driffield all turned to Teddie’s father, whose normally mild face was twisted into a look of downright annoyance.
Annoyance at what, Lee would not hazard a speculation. It could have been him, or it could have been everything. The latter would have been completely believable.
Quite wisely, Roderick had managed to somehow flutter out of sight some moments ago.
At once, Lee understood where Teddie had gotten her penchant for truculence. Her mother was most indignant and unswayed, even by the words of a husband.
She said, “But even a duke should not presume to say—”
Tiredly, Mr. Driffield shook his head. “We must put things to Theodora.”
“Put things to… to Theodora?” If his future had not hinged on Teddie, Lee would have laughed at the full confusion with which Mrs. Driffield asked the question. “She does not know what she wants or needs.”
“I believe she does,” said Mr. Driffield.
It was certainly a diplomatic way of disagreeing, thought Lee.
“Then you simply believe wrong!”
“I assure you that I do not feel, or think, that our daughter’s ability to reason is beneath ours.”
While Lee did not feel a particular discomfort at witnessing this familial back and forth, Sir Gregory winced as the words traveled between them. He looked as though he were witnessing two prizefighters exchange unsavory blows.
“It is not her reason that I question,” said Mrs. Driffield.
At best, Mrs. Driffield was overly concerned with shielding Teddie. Lee watched as she gazed at her husband, trying like many spouses did to convey her point without using words. He didn’t care that the Driffields were not of the peerage and didn’t think this discussion or where it was taking place were so terribly gauche, either. On balance, he himself was not the best example of someone refined or lauded. But he accepted that this family did not comport itself the way it perhaps should. Or more accurately, in the way that his had been taught to do.
Part of him was thinking ahead, as he was sure that Teddie would want to discuss such differences in upbringing. I want her to know I hold no arrogant illusions of supremacy.
Ruefully, he considered his time in the army, where he had witnessed and experienced scenarios that were beyond the pale. Further, and this did not bother him nearly as much as permanent injuries to his vocal cords, many of the officers were very keen to remind him that he’d been deemed as disposable by his father.
To be sure, they’d never called him anything other than his name, but they still found genteel ways to insult him.
“Let us,” said Mr. Driffield quietly, but with great temerity, “simply go and ask her.” It was with those words that they returned to the parlor. Even Sir Gregory came along. He now seemed so embedded in the proceedings that Lee wondered if he would ever leave the house.
Maybe he’s morbidly fascinated.
Teddie was on the chaise and Mrs. Crowley was standing next to it, speaking in a low, soothing tone. She glanced up with great disbelief to see her mother and father, Sir Gregory, and Lee gathered together. Teddie looked baffled when she saw them. But Lee was comforted by the way in which she only had eyes for him. They regarded each other with such warmth that Lee wanted to confound every bit of decorum in existence and kiss her deeply. Instead, he forced himself to enter the room first and kneel on the magnificent—or simply gaudy—rug so that he was looking up at Teddie.
Mrs. Driffield gave an unsettled grumble from the doorway. It was easy to picture her husband silencing any hardier protest before it could escape. Perhaps he merely glanced at her with warning in his eyes, or perhaps he shook his head.
“Teddie…” he took a deep breath, knowing everyone was listening.
Whether or not they could hear him.
Mrs. Crowley might be the only one who truly could, and that was due to her proximity.
Mr. Driffield took slow, deliberate steps into the parlor.
“Teddie,” he said, “I want this settled before any harm can come to you. Do you wish to be married to His Grace?”
If God was ever going to make him a father, Lee resolved that he wanted to address his child like Mr. Driffield addressed Teddie. Unlike her mother, he used the pet name that she preferred, and also unlike Mrs. Driffield, he spoke calmly, with precision and caring. Lee had to smile at her bewilderment. She did not appear at all offended, just stymied that her father would ask such a question at all.
“If you tell me to leave you, I shall,” said Lee. “But I was given to hope that you might…” he blinked, adrift in the intensity of his feelings. She would have had every right never to speak to him again, but it would have deprived him of the keenest discovery he’d ever wanted to make—what life would be like with her in it. He wanted to live the rest of his years with her, and for that to have happened at all demonstrated to him how important it was.
He certainly hadn’t been expecting it when they’d met over that damned rosebush, yet he’d revisited the memory of that night so often that it should be as worn as an antique coin. If memories could ever be material things, that was how he pictured them.
“This is outrageous, Your Grace!”
“Hush, Mama,” said Mrs. Crowley from somewhere to his left. He would not avert his attention from Teddie even though he knew he was acting most unlike a duke, which was certain to come to Sir Gregory’s attention. He might have to do something about that—like befriend the man so that he would not talk much about how undignified the Duke of Welburn was.
Then again, it was equally possible that such a story would make him a dashing, romantic hero in the minds of many of the ladies, especially.
“I don’t want you to leave me,” said Teddie.
For the first time in days, Lee felt a burden lift from his shoulders.
*
Teddie was proud that she managed to regain her senses as soon as she saw Mother, Father, Emilian, and Sir Gregory staring at her and Emma from the doorway, framed like some awful pantomime accentuated by their peering faces. They restored some sense of normalcy to her character, but until Emilian told her that she could send him away, she was not compelled to act.
She took both of his hands after she spoke.
He appeared so relieved that she was not sending him away that she might have been amused, were it not for the gravity of the circumstances.
He said, apparently forgetting himself, “Good, that’s blasted splendid to hear.”
She squeezed his hands, just, and asked, “Perhaps we may go for a turn in the garden?”
It was the only place they’d have any measure of privacy. He needed to explain himself to her. While she fully intended to accept the proposal, she did not want to do so immediately before her family and an acquaintance.
An acquaintance who had just wanted to take her outside to the garden, himself. She could not help but feel some compassion for Sir Gregory. In spite of all that she found flawed about him, it was not as though he had any universally bad qualities. He’d never said anything disrespectful to her. He’d never ogled her or come too close to her while they danced. She did not feel obligated to justify herself to him. They were not close, but she did recognize that some gracious behavior was in order.
“Yes, that would be most welcome,” Emilian replied, correctly guessing what she’d left silent.
While all of them would have had to gather closer in order to hear him, she had no doubt that her mother would be unstoppable in her endeavor to interfere. She would not care whether or not she could actually hear the duke, so long as she had the chance to voice whatever assertions she wanted. Teddie smiled at him and rose. As she stood, he did not let go of her hands, instead timing his movements to accommodate hers.
When she had settled at his side, he to
ok the crook of her arm instead of her hands.
Wordlessly, Father stepped away from the doorway and Mother, Emma, and Sir Gregory followed suit.
Could we perhaps become amicable acquaintances? she thought, as she walked past Sir Gregory. She paused so that she could turn to him, her arm still linked with Emilian’s, and say, “I am sorry, Sir Gregory, about all of this.”
To her mute wonder, she realized she was actually sorry. “Perhaps in the future, we may meet as friends and I shall tell you how…” Teddie considered what she wanted to say. It was rather amazing that coherent words were coming out of her mouth at all. “Ridiculous I have been.”
He nodded, and she noted that he appeared quite subdued. Crushed, even.
“I would like that,” he said.
“Then we shall arrange it.”
Her suggestion might be too much to ask of him, and anyway, she did find his company rather dull. Guiltily, she knew that a great deal of that disinterest was motivated by dissatisfaction with what the duke had never told her, and her drive to associate with a possible fiancé who was not the Duke of Welburn.
Sir Gregory must not be so bad. Perhaps it was purely because he is not the man at your side, now. The pleasing, fetching, earnest man whose thick, dark eyelashes she rather envied and Herculean body she longed to explore again.
Her parents’ townhouse now seemed to go on for a great expanse, but she led them successfully to the garden, where the day outside was as jubilant as she felt inwardly. London was not known for its fresh air, but the breath that met her nose was clean and sweet.
She could not have invented a better day if she’d sat down and thought of the most lovely, clichéd weather in any novel.
“We haven’t any good rosebushes, I’m afraid,” she said. “If that is a prerequisite for speaking to me.”
“If I were to be frank,” said Emilian, “I should also wait until it is night.” He smiled and shook his head. “I would have come out here with you even if it was snowing. I would risk life and limb to have this conversation.”
Duke of Misfortune Page 21
