“Do you, indeed, Miss Waters?”
She placed undue emphasis on the word miss, and Mary Elizabeth knew that her mother would be receiving a letter about the latest of her antics. However, she did not back down, as the damage was already done, and she still did not have her answer.
Catherine was in the room and looked as pale as death. Still, luck was with Mary Elizabeth, for it seemed to be a ladies’ tea, and her brother Alex nowhere in sight. He would have bundled her out of there, tossing his coat around her like some kind of avenging angel, as if none of these people had ever seen their own legs before, much less hers.
She saw the fat duke then, standing at attention in his finery against one wall. She turned her back on the duchess and faced him squarely.
“Your Worship,” she said to him. “I want a bit of something settled here, and you’re the man to help me. My friend has been playing at being a duke this morning, but I know that you are the laird here.”
The fat duke squinted at her, and then he blinked. He did not speak nor did he move, but a deep-puce color rose from his tight, white linen to suffuse his face. Mary Elizabeth thought for a moment that he might die of an apoplexy then and there.
It was the duchess who spoke, as it seemed the fat man had swallowed his tongue.
“That is my under butler, Miss Waters. Pemberton the Younger. I believe you have met his brother, who runs my house in Town.”
The women behind her tittered but fell silent when Harry turned a glare on them. Mary Elizabeth felt her own color rise and her stomach churn. If this fat man was some butler or other, who was the duke?
She looked at Harry, and he winked at her. She did not give him the satisfaction of acknowledging that, turning her back on him to face the duchess, her stomach sinking. “I beg your pardon, Your Worship and Pemberton,” she said. “My mistake.”
The fat under butler did not speak even then, but bowed solemnly, before tripping over the doorjamb on his way out of the room.
The duchess spoke to no one in particular. “Pemberton has a bit of trouble with doors, as he is terribly nearsighted. But he keeps the clocks in perfect time. No one has as fine a touch with watch-works as Pemberton does.”
The duchess had not yet lowered her quizzing glass and still had it trained on her. Mary Elizabeth felt a fool for mistaking a butler for a fine duke, as well as a bit chagrined for charging into the middle of a ladies’ tea like a bull run mad, but she wanted her answer and she could not wait another two hours for it. Her future was at stake.
She also hoped that the duchess might give Harry the dressing down of his life, and that she could watch.
She looked at the tea cart and saw that those well-dressed women had not touched the chocolate cream cakes on it. She wanted one of those as well.
“I wonder if we might speak alone,” Mary Elizabeth said.
It was not the duchess who cleared the room but Harry. He spoke only once, using a particularly arch tone, as if it were these ladies and not she who had offended him. “Leave us,” he said, as if they were all his servants and as if he lived to be served.
Before Mary Elizabeth could take him to task for rudeness, the women rose en masse and filed out of the room. Catherine was the last to go. She cast one glance at Harry as she might at a marauding lion, but came close enough to him to kiss Mary Elizabeth’s cheek.
Catherine did not speak but squeezed her hand in silent sympathy before she left. Mary Elizabeth was not sure she needed sympathy, but she welcomed Catherine’s sweet gesture all the same.
Since playing lord of the manner seemed to amuse Harry, Mary Elizabeth did not give him the satisfaction of correcting him this time but let his false airs stand. Especially since they had been so effective in clearing the room.
She turned instead to the duchess, only to find that august lady’s sights set on him. “Harry, what are you playing at, behaving with such a lack of decorum among the ladies?”
“They’ll love me for it,” Harry said.
Mary Elizabeth rolled her eyes, and the duchess harrumphed.
“It’s my house, Mother.”
“And those are your guests,” the duchess replied, dropping her quizzing glass. It fell against her large bosom, dangling from its gold chain. Mary Elizabeth listened to their words and started to feel sick.
Harry was not paying her any mind at all, but had gone over to the tea tray and poured himself a cup. “Not for much longer, I hope.”
“Another week, you blasted boy. Put that cold tea down. I’ll ring for a fresh pot.”
She did not bother to rise to go to the bell pull next to the fireplace, but instead rang a little silver bell that sat in pride of place on the tea tray. Billings appeared within the moment, as if by magic, carrying a new teapot wrapped in a cozy.
Harry thanked him, then poured for himself first, and then a second cup with cream and two sugars for Mary. He handed her a cup and a plate with two chocolate cream cakes on it. She sat down with them both and thanked him automatically. Her stomach was beginning to roil in earnest.
“Your Worship,” Mary Elizabeth said at last, “is this man your son?”
The duchess blinked once, for all the world as if Mary Elizabeth had asked something extraordinary. But the old lady rallied almost at once. Taking a sip of tea that Harry had just freshened, the duchess said, “Why, of course he is.”
Seventeen
Harry was not sure what he expected when his mother made that revelation, but whatever it was, he did not get it. Mary Elizabeth did not shout the house down. She did not reach for her whisky or for one of her blades.
Instead, she simply sat, looking somewhat ill. She finished her sip of tea and then set the cup and her cake plate down. “God have mercy,” she said.
“No doubt He will,” his mother answered, wriggling her fingers at Harry, who obediently poured more tea.
Mary Elizabeth was silent a long while, and he watched her digest the information he had been trying to impart to her off and on all day. He felt the last of his anger at her slipping away, like smoke from a fire that had long since gone out. He found himself sorry that he had lied to her in the first place. He should have revealed himself on the very first day, if not on the very first evening he had kissed her in his mother’s rose garden. He felt like a cad and a bounder as he sat there, watching the woman he loved come to grips with the fact that, in some small ways, he had betrayed her.
“It’s good news, Mary,” he said at last.
She met his eyes, and he saw the heat leap in the maple depths of her gaze, revealing the tinge of green along her irises. “It’s good news that you’ve been making a fool of me, mocking me behind my back to God knows who all?”
Just like the strike of flint on steel, Harry felt his temper take light. He was in the wrong, so he tried to hold on to it. He managed, but barely.
“Mary Elizabeth, I think we have things to discuss in private.”
“Well, take yourselves elsewhere,” the duchess said. “You’ve run my guests off, but I am staying here until I finish my tea.”
When neither Harry nor Mary Elizabeth looked to her, the duchess simply pursed her lips and ate another cream cake. She settled back against her cushions, as if to watch a show. Harry felt a blush begin to rise along his cheekbones. He did not want to air his romantic laundry in front of his mother.
“I’ve not been mocking you,” Harry said, deciding to deal with one of his women at a time.
“Well, you’re the only one, then,” Mary Elizabeth said. “Those women will spread the word as far as Aberdeen and all the way to London that Mary Elizabeth Waters is such a country bumpkin fool that she does not know a famous duke when she sees one.”
“Why do you care what those women think of you?” Harry asked, perplexed, his temper starting to fade.
Mary Elizabeth blinked, and he saw that there were actually tears
in her eyes. “I don’t,” she said. “But my mother does. Damn and blast you for a lying cad, Harry.”
She was on her feet and out of the room before he could rally long enough to reach for her hand. Harry sat in silence with his mother for a long moment, feeling like the stable dirt that clung to the bottom of his favorite riding boots. The only sound in the room was the ticking of the gold clock on the mantel that had been a gift from Louis XVI of France.
“You’d best settle with that one, and quickly” was all his mother said.
Harry rubbed his eyes, suddenly feeling tired and much older than his thirty years. “I’m trying, Mother. I’m trying.”
“Try harder. I’ve word that her mother will be arriving within the week.”
Another wild woman from the North. Harry did not think the household could handle two of them. Perhaps Mary Elizabeth only needed an hour alone to cool down. He sighed and rose to leave, kissing his mother’s cheek.
* * *
Harry watched Mary Elizabeth all through dinner from his lofty place at the head of the table, and he saw that she did not eat much of the glorious repast his mother had laid on. The handsome footman, Sam, tried repeatedly to discreetly urge more food onto her gold-rimmed plate, and the last time he tried with the candied fruit was the only moment all evening when Harry saw his girl smile.
He stayed back with the gentlemen as was seemly, for in his pursuit of Mary Elizabeth, he had let every social duty lapse. He found he had as little to say to the men who were his peers as he did to their women, save for Alex Waters, who talked a bit about the fur trade from Canada, bringing all discussion in the room to a dead stop.
“It’s how we make our living in the back of beyond,” Alex said.
The gentlemen did not seem to know how to respond to this, so Harry took that moment to suggest that they join the ladies in the drawing room forthwith. He saw Alex meet his Catherine close to the tea trolley, but as he scanned the room, he could not find Mary Elizabeth anywhere.
His mother raised her quizzing glass and took him in, then raised one eyebrow. He knew that she wanted the matter of his marriage settled before the girl’s mother arrived. Harry looked to the settee in the middle of the hubbub, where Lady Ashleigh had saved a place for him. The good lady, a bit bolder than the rest, patted the cushion beside her with a wink.
Harry bowed to her and then to the company, saying that he needed to see to a horse that was foaling in the stables. He could not think of a better lie, and since he was a duke, and they were all there to hunt him, they let him go with only a few murmurs of regret. The women were disappointed, but he could tell by the way they looked him over like a stallion at market that the ruder he was to them, the more they loved it.
Strange creatures, women.
His mother simply laughed at him behind her hand as he left the room. He set aside all thoughts of his guests and the social demands that would be required of him as soon as Mary Elizabeth agreed to be his. He thought instead of a happier threat he had made—a promise that, this time, he would actually keep.
* * *
Mary Elizabeth was not sure how she made it through the ten-course dinner. It seemed to go on for ages, with each course more cumbersome than the one before it. She had seen Alex frowning at her and Harry staring like a galoot, but only the attentions of a decent footman had made her feel a little better, and he was paid to pay attention to her.
God have mercy, but she was losing her mind.
She had watched all night as the women simpered at Harry, as the men tried to impress him, as all but Alex and Catherine treated him as if his every utterance were spun in gold. Mary Elizabeth could not stomach another minute of the farce and had slipped away from the ladies right after dinner. She hid now among the books of the library, knowing that no one, namely Catherine or Alex, would think to look for her there.
She could give a fig for reading on the whole, since she preferred action to sitting, but this library was the best she had ever seen, rising two stories, with a balcony that ran around the top of the room, accessible by a staircase. It was high above that she found some wonderful books on fencing translated from the French, and another leather-bound tome on the tempering of steel for sword making, that one translated from the Spanish. Mary Elizabeth took one moment to wish she had learned a bit of languages, that she might study the originals, but she lost herself in the world of Toledo steel folding almost at once, and did not look up until the door slammed below her, making her jump.
She peered down, expecting to find Alex glaring, but she discovered Harry smiling up at her instead.
“Go away, Harry,” Mary Elizabeth groused. “I’m reading.”
“You can keep reading once we’re done talking,” he answered. “Come down.”
“I’ve nothing to say to you.”
“Well, I’ve a great deal to say to you.”
Mary Elizabeth did not respond, save to sit back in her leather wingback chair and raise her book to cover her face. She tried hard to focus on the matter at hand, namely the temperature that was required of a blaze to begin the first step in melting good steel, when she heard the tapping of Harry’s heels on the staircase.
“Mary Elizabeth, I don’t mean to be rude, but we’ve talking to do, and I’ve a promise to keep. The sun has not yet set, but it will within the hour.”
Mary did her best to ignore him even then, but he was standing close beside her chair, looming in that delicious way of his, and the scent of warm sandalwood seemed to enfold her like an eiderdown quilt. She drew the scent deep into her nose in spite of herself, and found that she loved no other scent so well on earth. Why did the man she loved have to be a blasted Englishman? And why did he have to be born with a ducal coronet affixed to his brow like the mark of Cain? Mary knew better than to ask such questions, as they had no answer.
“What promise do you mean?” she asked. “And what has the setting sun to do with it?”
“I promised to turn you over my knee by sunset, and I am losing daylight.”
She set her heavy book down in her lap and laughed long and loud at that. She did not finger her weapons, nor did she even reach for their handles. Harry might be an Englishman and a blighter, but she would not need her weapons to ward off an attack from him.
“Harry, I am reading. I am not in the mood to play games with you. Go on then, and find one of your fawning ladies to chat and canoodle with, because I’ll have none of it.”
“I don’t want one of my fawning ladies, as you put it. I want you.”
Mary started reading her book again, or at least tried to. Harry still loomed over her, and she found herself listening to his breathing, waiting for him to go away. That was, until he plucked the heavy book from between her hands as if it weighed nothing, tossing it onto a nearby table.
“Be careful of that,” she said. “Books cost money.”
He did not answer her, lifting her into his arms. He did not carry her like a lady, however, but tossed her over his shoulder like a sack of flour. Mary Elizabeth saw only his nicely rounded backside peeking from beneath his tailcoat as he carried her down the staircase to the library below.
“Have you lost your bleedin’ mind?” she asked when she got her breath.
He did not answer her until he had tossed her onto a sofa. “Indeed, I have,” he answered. “It’s the only logical explanation for why I am in love with you.”
“In love, are you? Is that why you’ve been pretending to be someone else since the day I met you, and why you carry me about like a parcel?”
“Mary Elizabeth Waters, listen to me speak, because I am only going to say this once. I am sorry I did not tell you of my title. But my true name is Harry, and I gave it to you from the first. I am a man who loves roses and horses and sailing. I have never lied to you about anything that matters, and I never will.”
Mary glared up at
him as he stood over her, still looming. “You apologize?”
“I do. Deeply, and with all my heart.”
Mary Elizabeth stared into the blue of his eyes. She looked at him for a long moment, and decided to let her ire go. She knew in that moment that part of her anger was at herself, for being so blind and foolish that she had not noticed a duke when he was standing as big as life under her nose.
“All right,” she said. “I accept your apology. And I hope you will accept my apology for calling you a liar.”
“I will.”
Still, Harry did not sit down beside her, and she began to wonder what he was about.
“There is still the small matter of you impinging on my honor, however.”
She smiled. “Your honor?”
“Indeed. Today, on horseback, you called me a liar. I must have satisfaction.”
“Shall we fight at rapiers, then?” she asked hopefully.
“No,” Harry said. He was not smiling back. “I will not call you out. I will, however, turn you over my knee here and now.”
She laughed out loud at him for the second time in ten minutes. “You will, will you? Good luck to you, boy-o.”
She was off, sliding away from him as quick as a whippet. Harry must have been surprised by the fact that a woman was running away from him, for he did not catch her arm, though he reached for her. She had almost made it to the door when he was on her, turning her to face him, his large body pressing her back against the walnut surface.
Harry did not speak to continue their argument, but moved away from her a little almost at once, staring down at her with an arrested look that she had never seen on his face before. Mary looked down then at where his gaze was tending, thinking that perhaps he was taking a gander at her bosom, as he so often seemed to do. Instead, he was looking at the dirk she had drawn without even knowing she had done it.
She saw that the point was tilted as she had been taught from a child, the wicked sharp blade pointed just so, ready to slip between his ribs and plunge into his lung. She opened her fingers at once and let the blade drop. As close as she and Harry were standing, the blade still had room to fall between them. The dirk hit the carpet with a dull thud, and she forced herself to meet Harry’s eyes, knowing that the censure she would find there was well deserved.
How to Train Your Highlander Page 12
