Daring Lords and Ladies

by Emily Murdoch

  “A child falling from trees and into ponds is a far cry from a duchess being pushed from—”

  “I was not pushed. I fell. Nothing more.” Rhiannon had far bigger problems to consider than a few random accidents.

  “You have to show him the account books, Your Grace.” Josiah took the hint and changed the subject to the matter at hand.

  “I know. The only question is, which set of books do I show him?”

  Chapter Four

  “Traitors,” his duchess muttered as Endymion escorted her past the footmen lined up along the dining room wall.

  “Is something amiss, Your Grace?” he asked as he seated her in the chair to the left of his at the head of the table.

  “Not at all.” Her forced smile and gracious demeanor did not fool him for a moment. Endymion’s arrival had thrown his wife’s entire life into turmoil. From the way she flounced into the carved cherrywood chair and glowered at the perfectly appointed table, the Duchess of Pendeen was in high dudgeon. And it suited her. Rather, it suited Rhiannon, the girl he’d known long ago. He wasn’t quite certain who his duchess was. Rhiannon. Why was he so reluctant to use her name?

  Attired in a simple green silk gown that bared her shoulders and fell in a straight line to the floor, she looked every inch the duchess. Her hair, done in a series of tightly wound braids atop her head added a few inches to her height. For some reason, that made Endymion smile.

  “You set a lovely table, Your Grace.” Voil, seated across from her on Endymion’s right, waved his hand to indicate the rich linen-covered, formally set expanse that stretched down most of the room.

  “Thank you, Lord Voil,” she replied as she peered around the large silver epergne, two dragons rampant against a medieval tower, in an attempt to see the marquess. “But it is my servants who set the table. They appear to have emptied the silver closet and the entire butler’s pantry to do so.”

  Endymion draped his serviette across his lap and caught the conspiratorial grin Voil shot him. No doubt, the lady had instructed the servants not to change a thing simply because His Grace was in residence. Those selfsame servants had taken it upon themselves to bedeck the table with the finest Sevres, the daintiest crystal, and the de Waryn family silver. Endymion recognized the silver, which matched the set with which he dined at the London townhouse.

  “This oxtail soup is incomparable, Your Grace,” Voil offered, leaning from one side of the epergne to the other. “Better than any I have had in London.”

  “I will be certain to pass your compliments on to Cook,” Rhiannon replied. She tilted her head from side to side around the epergne in complete opposition to Voil’s, as if they played an adult version of some child’s game.

  Endymion attended his soup. Voil was correct. It was delicious, as was the mackerel in gooseberry sauce, which accompanied it. The food kindled embers of memory. It tasted familiar, but distantly so. Why could he not shake this sensation of being smothered and then allowed to breathe, only to smother once more?

  “Tall William,” Rhiannon snapped, drawing Endymion from his reverie. “Please remove this eyesore from the table.”

  “Eyesore, Your Grace?” The footman she’d handed the gun to earlier, now dressed in spotless black and white livery, stepped away from the wall and scanned the table.

  “This…thing.” She waved at the epergne. “I refuse to bob about like a duck in search of breadcrumbs at my own dinner table.”

  “Yes, Your Grace.” Tall William lifted the offending silver piece clear of the table and retreated behind the hidden door set into the wall at the far end of the dining room.

  “It is called an epergne, and I doubt my grandfather would consider such an expensive piece an eyesore,” Endymion said. Voil kicked him under the table.

  “If your grandfather deigns to return from the grave to join us before dessert, I will have the epergne returned to the table,” Rhiannon replied, her French flawless.

  Voil choked on his soup. He waved off the footman who stepped forward to assist him. And still managed to rasp out “A hit!” between coughs.

  Endymion, however, was not amused. His wife finished her soup and started on the mackerel. Eventually she sensed his eyes on her. She carefully placed her silverware across her plate and dabbed the serviette to the corners of her mouth. Her sensuous rose-colored mouth. Not that he noticed.

  “That ducal glare might intimidate a pale London miss, Your Grace,” Rhiannon said softly, “but I have stared down angry miners, wife-beating farmers, and any number of high-in-the-instep peers, your arse of a great uncle included. I am not afraid of you…Dymi.”

  Endymion leaned across the table and covered her hand with his. “I am pleased to hear it, Duchess. Fear is never a good basis for a marriage.”

  “Neither is two hundred and fifty miles and nearly two decades apart,” she replied as she drew her hand from beneath his and lifted it to signal the removal for the next course.

  Voil cleared his throat and kicked Endymion again for good measure. Why the devil had he allowed the man to accompany him? This entire venture was difficult enough without his friend’s interference.

  “I take it, you are not accustomed to dining in this”—Voil craned his neck to take in the entire room—“mausoleum.”

  Rhiannon laughed. “You have caught me out, Lord Voil. I usually take my meals in my study or in the family dining room.”

  Endymion conducted a surreptitious survey of the room, a room of which he had no recollection. The furnishings, cherrywood dining chairs with deep blue and gold brocade upholstery, matched the expansive cherrywood dining table. Indeed, all the sideboards and commodes along the walls were also cherrywood and looked to be of Chippendale’s design. The walls shone with gold embossed silk wallcovering, the floors with blue and gold Aubusson. A room as elegant and impersonal as any room in any house in Mayfair. His uncle had constantly disparaged the country home “your country duchess” kept as nothing short of a common wreck of a place. What other untruths had he told?

  “I am not family,” Voil prattled on, “but I much prefer dining in more intimate surroundings.”

  The footmen silently placed plates of roast beef with gravy, potatoes, carrots, and fluffy Yorkshire puddings before them. Endymion gave Voil a warning glance and tucked into the hot, aromatic course before him.

  Family.

  This house had never held a family. None that he remembered, at least. As he ate, Endymion glanced at the woman to whom he’d been married since she was a girl of fourteen. The woman he’d known since they were both in leading strings. A stranger. If she was uncomfortable sitting at this grand table under the watchful eye of a portrait of one of his female ancestors, he was even more so. His erect posture and impeccable table manners were all a show. He was ill at ease in his own skin, let alone in the hallowed halls of Gorffwys Ddraig, as she called it. And he would never let her know it, for fear she might use the knowledge against him.

  Rhiannon did not fear him, but he found himself more than a little afraid of her. From the moment he laid eyes on her as she stormed into the foyer with a Manton fowling piece on her arm, two things slammed into him like a punch to the head when sparring with Gentleman Jackson himself. The first, his wife was far more alluring and complicated than he’d ever imagined. And second, being near her stirred a past to life he had no desire to revisit.

  “I trust your journey here was a good one, Your Grace,” his duchess inquired with an innocent smile he didn’t trust.

  “Tolerable,” Endymion replied and returned attention to his plate. Voil groaned and kicked at him, but his aim failed. Endymion turned on the marquess and gave him the “What?” expression he’d employed when they attended Oxford and Voil discovered they were in trouble before he did.

  “His journey may have been tolerable, but mine was not,” Voil declared.

  “Oh dear,” she replied. “Why ever not?”

  The lady was enjoying this entirely too much. Endymion had never mastered
the art of idle chatter. Voil was an artist at it.

  “Oh, your husband’s coach is the very model of comfort,” Voil said, warming to his story, “but he refuses to travel once the sun sets. He is most particular as to which inns he patronizes. And he refuses to allow a man food and drink in the confines of his conveyance.”

  By the time Voil finished his tale of woe, she was laughing softly, with her fingers pressed to her lips. Her shoulders, flattered by the cut of her green silk gown, shook beneath the light of the candelabra. “Surely not, Lord Voil.”

  “God’s truth, Your Grace. The duke is a most disagreeable travel companion,” Voil, the traitorous wretch, assured her.

  “Defend yourself, Your Grace.” Rhiannon signaled for the next course.

  “I cannot, Madam,” Endymion replied. “He is telling the truth. For once. At least, his version of it.”

  “And your version?” She touched her fingers to his hand, briefly. Not briefly enough, for her touch shot through him and lodged somewhere behind his ribs.

  “Voil has never traveled farther west than Hampshire. He has no idea the dangers one might encounter on the less traveled roads at night. And I am too fond of my horses to allow them to break a leg for the sake of expedience.” Endymion leaned back to allow the footmen to clear the course and set a spinach tart before him.

  “What dangers? Did you imagine we’d be set upon by highwaymen?” Voil asked, waving a forkful of tart in the air. “There haven’t been highwaymen in England for a dog’s age.”

  A wave of heat, followed by a chilling cold, washed over Endymion. His head pulsed as if wrapped in wool. He carefully placed his silverware alongside his plate. His left hand slid to the top of his thigh where he pinched himself. Another technique his grandfather had taught him. A dainty hand curled around his beneath the table. He turned his head enough to see her face. Her smile, all amusement and cordiality, was for Voil. Her eyes, however, soft and deep and shining with the sort of understanding only a kindred spirit might know, were for Endymion alone.

  “There are men far more evil than highwaymen wandering the roads, Lord Voil,” she said. “Cornwall is not London.”

  “You as well, Your Grace?” Voil said in mock horror. “Of course, you and Pendeen grew up together, didn’t you? With tales of ghosts and beasts on the moors.”

  “Really, my lord,” Rhiannon said as she gave Endymion’s hand a last squeeze. “We had no time for such nonsense when we were children. We were far too busy climbing trees and stealing Cook’s mince pies.”

  “As I recall, you were busy falling out of trees, and I was busy catching you before you dashed your brains out on the ground,” Endymion said dryly.

  “How ungentlemanly of you to remember,’ Rhiannon chided him. “And allowing me to land on top of you does not constitute catching me.”

  “His Grace, the Duke of Pendeen, stealing pies?” Voil asked with a silly grin.

  Endymion rolled his eyes at the marquess. “I most certainly did not. I merely ate the pies Her Grace stole.”

  Voil roared with laughter.

  Endymion caught the serviette she tossed at him.

  “You, Your Grace,” she declared indignantly, “should be ashamed of yourself. I was only able to steal the pies because you distracted Cook for me to do so.”

  “You both fared better than I,” Voil groused. “I tried to have a meat pasty delivered to the coach when we stopped in St. Agnes. This one,” he jerked a thumb at Endymion, “caught the maid I paid to sneak it to me, paid her, and told her to eat the pasty with his compliments.”

  “I trust this evening’s dinner has made up for it,” Endymion said as the footmen cleared the spinach tart and served orange pudding and trifle for dessert.

  “Indeed, it has,” Voil replied. “Superb repast. It almost makes up for my missing the chance to visit one of the most haunted taverns in England. ’Tis said they serve a fine ale there, and a tasty beef pasty too. Pendeen here refused to even entertain the notion of stopping.”

  Endymion took care to guide the spoonful of orange pudding to his mouth. He chewed it thoroughly and allowed it to slide down his throat. No fire had been lit in the hearth beneath the carved marble mantelpiece. Cold crept over his evening shoes and up his legs, inches at a time, like the thick black water of the bogs between the village of Zennor and Pendeen. He continued to spoon the pudding into his mouth. His eyes wide open, he saw nothing.

  Rhiannon’s voice cut through the pounding roar in Endymion’s ears. “There are no haunted taverns in Cornwall, Lord Voil. You’ve heard only gossip and children’s tales to entertain visitors.”

  “Certainly, you have heard of it, Your Grace,” Voil insisted. “It is not far from here, although your husband had his coachman take the long way around and missed it altogether. It is said the ghost of a beautiful tavern wench can be seen on moonlit nights. The tavern is The Mermaid’s—”

  “You are misinformed, my lord. There is no such tavern and no such ghost,” Rhiannon snapped. She pushed her dish away so suddenly drops of trifle dropped onto the pristine linen tablecloth.

  Endymion stared at those drops. He did not look at her, Rhiannon, his duchess. His lungs slowed. His heart raced. He didn’t know why, not completely. But she did. He heard it in her voice—concern and pain on his behalf. He held his spoon until his knuckles blanched and continued to eat his pudding. And wished his best and only friend to the devil. Wished his grandfather to the devil for forcing him to return to Cornwall, even from beyond the grave.

  The clink of his spoon at the bottom of the crystal dessert dish shook something loose in him. By rote, Endymion set his dish back. He wiped his mouth with the expensive linen serviette and placed it on the table next to the dish. The cherrywood chair slid silently across the Aubusson as he pushed it away from the table. He stood and finally turned to face Rhiannon. The look on her face cut him like a blade. The roar of a musket blast filled his mind.

  “Pendeen?” Voil’s voice was uncharacteristically serious.

  “Dinner was most enjoyable, Duchess. Thank you.” Endymion reached for his wife’s hand, bowed over it, and in as dignified a manner as his shaky legs allowed, fled the room.

  Chapter Five

  Dressed in her oldest linen nightgown, with her hair brushed out and secured in one long braid down her back, Rhiannon tucked her feet beneath herself and breathed in the sweet summer air laced with the scents of lavender and roses. After the events of this day, she desperately needed the sanctuary of her favorite place and some time to contemplate…everything.

  Rhiannon had many favorite places within the walls of Gorffwys Ddraig, but the generous window seat in the duchess’s bedchamber suited her best. Set into a large bowed window overlooking the back terrace and gardens, it afforded her an incomparable view of the fields and hills beyond the estate grounds. With the casement window open, the night sounds slipped inside, a soothing symphony to her unquiet mind. The house held a man-made beauty not to be compared with any other home in the West Country. The land, however… The land gave her strength and purpose. Even under moonlight, it spoke to her.

  Every field and forest had called to her, claimed her since she became mistress of the estate at the age of fourteen. From the morning after her hastily conducted marriage until the morning her father died, she had not altered a single piece of furniture nor changed out even one worn carpet.

  “It is His Grace’s house, my girl, no matter how long he stays away. I won’t have him return and find it different from the way he left it.”

  Her father had been adamant in two things—the duke would one day return and bring her husband with him, and the duke would have no reason to question leaving his home in her care. The day after her father’s funeral, Rhiannon had ordered the animal heads removed from the entrance hall, and she had not looked back. All of seventeen years old, she’d laid claim to the house and banished every vestige of darkness, brutality, and sorrow within those walls. By the time the old duke died, and
she was duchess in name as well as deed, Gorffwys Ddraig was hers from the attics to the wine cellars. She fully intended it remain so.

  “How went the dinner?” Beatrice Smith, Rhiannon’s lady’s maid, lifted the green gown from the bed and shook it out, inspecting it for stains.

  “You tell me, Bea. The servants in this house know what I am about before I am about it.”

  “Now, Your Grace, there isn’t a person serving you who isn’t loyal to a fault,” Bea admonished her. She stepped into the dressing room and returned moments later without the dress, but with a cotton night rail in her hands.

  “Which means they carry no tales outside this house. Gossip amongst themselves, however, is perfectly acceptable.”

  Bea draped the night rail across a heavy brocade chair before the hearth. It was August, but Gorffwys Ddraig had ever been drafty no matter the improvements Rhiannon had made. The fire was just large enough to keep the room warm.

  “Precisely, Your Grace. I understand His Grace left the dining room quite precipitously.”

  Unfolding herself from the window seat, Rhiannon swung her braid over her shoulder. “You may His Grace him all you like. If you Your Grace me one more time when we are alone, you’ll be leaving this room precipitously.” She settled in the brocade chair.

  Tall and slender, with white-blonde hair and cornflower blue eyes, Beatrice was a few years younger. They’d been friends from childhood. She’d come to Rhiannon over ten years ago, beaten and nearly dead. Once she healed, she’d asked for two things—a position in Rhiannon’s household and her silence. Rhiannon kept so many secrets, her own, and Endymion’s, and a few others she dared not contemplate—what was one more?

  “We are not having this discussion again, Your Grace. I am your lady’s maid and content to be so.” Bea made herself busy preparing a cup of tea from the kettle on the fireside hob.

  “You are my friend and the daughter of—”

  “And you are avoiding the question,” Bea said. She handed Rhiannon the cup of tea.