by Eloisa James
A few days later, Viola and Joan were sitting in the drawing room when Aunt Knowe trotted in and announced that Mrs. Pettigrew, Miss Pettigrew, and Mr. Marlowe had unexpectedly come to pay a visit.
Viola and Joan sprang to their feet. They had spent the morning making paper flowers, and bright scraps of paper were scattered all over the carpet. Barty had been seated on the back of the settee, overseeing their work, but he startled, instinctively tried to fly, and flopped over the back of the settee instead.
“Barty!” Viola cried, peering over. Her crow managed to land on his feet and looked up at her crossly. From experience she knew that he would now spend an hour or two grooming each of his wing feathers into shiny perfection.
Barty was a pragmatic bird, as the duke pointed out: Having discovered that his wings didn’t function, he focused on beauty.
“Join us whenever you wish,” she told him, and got to her feet. When Barty wasn’t embarrassed—as he was now—he was a sociable fellow who added companionable squawks to any conversation.
Aunt Knowe was greeting their guests at the drawing room door. Viola walked over to join her, leaving Barty to sulk behind the settee.
Miss Pettigrew was tall, with a superb bosom that curved like the prow of a ship. But nothing else about her resembled those jolly wooden women who plunge into the waves, breasts leading the way.
She wore a navy gown whose only ornament was a row of shiny buttons, a style that labeled the gown three to four years old. Viola had the strong feeling that Miss Pettigrew did not pay attention to frivolities of fashion. The pious look in her eyes suggested she considered herself above such earthly concerns.
Her mother was a taller version of the daughter, and her black gown, if not her expression, proclaimed that fashion was a trivial matter.
“He’s very handsome,” Joan whispered as Viola finished her curtsies. “I’d wager that all the ladies hereabouts begin attending services.”
Viola always avoided looking at strange men, having perfected the art of dropping into a curtsy and murmuring a greeting with lowered eyes. She had registered only that Mr. Marlowe didn’t tower over her the way the Wildes did. He wasn’t much taller than she was, perhaps even shorter than Miss Pettigrew.
It wasn’t until their new vicar was escorting his future mother-in-law to a settee that Viola dared to peek at his face.
Joan was right.
Squire Pretner’s three young daughters would be lined up in the front pew after they caught a glimpse of Mr. Marlowe’s profile. He was as startlingly handsome as an actor on the London stage. A lock of honey-colored hair fell over his bright blue eyes. He wasn’t wearing a wig, nor had he powdered his hair.
She was so entranced that she forgot to look away when he sat down. When he smiled at her, she felt the shock to the tips of her fingers. His eyes were warm and caring. One knew instinctively that he would be kind to everyone, from a crotchety elder to a colicky baby.
He turned away to respond to Aunt Knowe’s offer of tea, and Viola barely managed to keep her mouth shut. Her whole body was caught in a delicious, yearning warmth.
Joan, who always knew what Viola was thinking, planted a sharp elbow in her side. “He’s betrothed,” she hissed into Viola’s ear. “And short.”
“So am I,” Viola breathed.
“I’m sorry about the untidy state of this room,” Aunt Knowe was saying. “We’ve spent the last few hours making bouquets of paper flowers.”
“Decorations for our little sister’s birthday,” Joan explained.
Miss Pettigrew brushed a paper scrap onto the floor before she seated herself opposite Viola and Joan. “A charming notion.” Her expression suggested she would expect nothing less from indolent aristocrats.
“I could send a bunch of paper peonies to the vicarage, if you’d like,” Aunt Knowe offered.
“I do not care for decorations that collect dust,” Miss Pettigrew announced. Viola suspected that all her statements were announcements. “A tidy bouquet of fresh flowers is an acceptable adornment.”
“I see,” Aunt Knowe said.
Joan put her arm around Viola’s waist and gave her a little pinch, signaling either delight or horror. Probably both, since Miss Pettigrew was proving to be a character, and thus likely to entertain the family at dinner, in absentia, of course. Joan loved to act out the foibles of more outrageous visitors to the castle.
Mrs. Pettigrew smoothed her skirts. “We just came from Mobberley. The vicarage needs complete refurbishing. I gather it suffered a fire a decade ago?”
Aunt Knowe nodded. “An unfortunate accident.”
“We considered accepting His Grace’s offer to stay in the castle while the building is being reconstructed to my specifications.”
Aunt Knowe’s eyelids didn’t flicker at this news; not for nothing was she born and bred into the peerage. But Viola could tell that her stepfather would have an earful later.
“That will take some months. Upon consideration, I think it best that I return to London once I deem the building plans acceptable,” Mrs. Pettigrew continued. “Bishop Pettigrew cannot do without me. Obviously, it would be unseemly for my daughter to remain in the castle with Mr. Marlowe, since they have not yet taken vows.”
“Of course,” Aunt Knowe said.
“Mr. Marlowe may remain here,” Mrs. Pettigrew allowed.
Mr. Marlowe leaned forward. “I shan’t be underfoot,” he assured Aunt Knowe. “There is a great deal to be done in the parish, since Father Duddleston died some weeks ago.”
“The parish is as disorganized as the vicarage,” Miss Pettigrew put in. “Mr. Marlowe will need to catalogue the parish unfortunates.”
Viola’s mind was whirling.
Mr. Marlowe was . . . He was the man she had never dared to imagine. She hadn’t the slightest hint of nausea in his presence. She had no wish to flee to the cowshed. Instead, she wanted nothing more than to listen and contribute to his plans.
Yet . . . he was betrothed. A daring and heretofore undiscovered part of her mind pointed out that betrothal was not the same as marriage.
She glanced back at Mr. Marlowe. The curve of his lower lip was remarkably appealing for a man. His form was slender. He would likely dance extremely gracefully. But no: Vicars don’t dance, she reminded herself.
Joan elbowed her. “Stop ogling him,” she hissed.
Viola looked down at her plate and discovered to her surprise that she’d finished her shortbread. She never ate among strangers and yet . . .
Her stomach felt entirely peaceful.
This must be love, she thought wonderingly.
Love.
Love is miraculous.
If she were a vicar’s wife, she’d have no need of ballrooms, although at the moment she felt brave enough to dance a minuet. In fact, if she married Mr. Marlowe she might never have to enter a ballroom again.
Gladness flooded her body, and she barely stopped herself from gazing at the vicar again, her heart in her eyes.
Perhaps he would never be hers—although some steely part of her was determined he would be hers—but even if not . . .
She could still save him from this dreadful marriage.
He was like her beloved Cleo and Daisy. Like Barty, whom she rescued after he fell from the nest. Mr. Marlowe needed to be saved from the domineering Miss Pettigrew.
She had a mission.
And she was in love.
Chapter Three
The Duke of Wynter’s townhouse
Mayfair
Devin Lucas Augustus Elstan, Duke of Wynter, was not the sort of man who wasted time. Or, rather, as he would have phrased it: not the sort of duke. He had grown up knowing that a duke (or future duke) was as different from the average man as a lion from a tabby cat.
He wasn’t akin to the other lions either. He watched with bemusement as his peers gathered to circle a crowded dance floor, or met at the racetrack for the sole purpose—or so it seemed—of losing money in questionable bets. Being a
mathematician, he had walked into a gambling house as a young man, spent precisely one hour there, and walked out considerably richer.
But also bored.
He had been educated in isolation by a series of tutors as befitted the future Duke of Wynter and an only child. Normally, a duke’s son would have met other children at house parties, but due to his father’s reckless propensity for dueling, such invitations had stopped by the time he reached the age of four.
His only acquaintances had been his cousins, especially the two closest to his age, Otis and Hazel. Even so, he saw them rarely, as his father didn’t care to remain in the same house longer than a month or two.
Like Queen Elizabeth in the 1600s, the ducal establishment had moved from estate to estate as the duke’s fancy struck him. While the duchess was alive—she had died when Devin was fourteen—she either engaged in pitched battles with her husband or disappeared for months, choosing to live in more congenial environs.
“The one thing you can say about marriage,” she was fond of saying, “is that not even an idiot is allowed to challenge his wife to a duel.”
Or, Devin might have added, challenge his son.
By the age of ten, Devin had realized that his father’s adherence to that particular tenet of civilization was all that stood between him and a gravestone.
When he inherited the dukedom at age sixteen, it was too late to bother with Eton or Harrow, and he had no time to spare for Oxford. It was too late for friends.
People found him to be cold, arrogant, and uncaring.
He accepted that judgment with disinterest.
To go back to the image of the lions and tabbies, as Devin saw it, strange cats slept by each other in the sun, whereas a lion was only comfortable in the company of his blood relatives.
His pride.
Even the most frustrating ones, which in this case included his cousin Otis.
“Do you really mean to tell me that you’re giving up your living, Otis? St. Wilfrid’s, which I held open for you for the last two years until you finally graduated from Cambridge?”
Otis lounged opposite, looking entirely unrepentant. “It’s easy for you to be so patronizing. As a second son, I’m supposed to find a genteel profession. The law is far too abstruse, and the military dismayingly violent. That left the church. I kept to the scheme as long as I could. My new plan is to move to the continent and woo an heiress.”
“You’ve only been in the vicarage for two weeks. Why are you turning down St. Wilfrid’s?”
“Not just Wilfrid’s,” Otis said. “I’m done with the clerical life, cuz.”
Devin leveled a glance at Otis that had turned the current Lord Mayor of London into an incoherent apologist.
“No use looking at me like that,” his cousin said, grinning. “You’ve known me from the cradle and there’s no point in trying to shame me. It won’t take. If you don’t mind me pointing out the obvious, that should have been a sign that the clergy was never the place for me.”
“Seven years of studying theology at Cambridge en route to becoming a priest, and you’re throwing it away two weeks after ordination. Without trying to make a success of it. Even for you, that’s remarkable.”
Otis leveled a finger at him. “Careful, Dev. You’re cold-blooded by nature, and if you don’t watch yourself, you’re going to become as prickly and mean-spirited as your father.”
“St. Wilfrid’s is an excellent post. With two curates in residence, you scarcely have anything to do other than marry the occasional parishioner and baptize a baby or two. You can’t have given it a proper try.”
Otis grimaced. “I did! I was going along merrily, ready to hand out wise advice to all those who asked, when Gerdsby—that’s the curate who resembles a goat—hauled me along to someone’s house yesterday morning. I’d had too much ale the night before and I wasn’t paying much attention, but when I got there, it turned out I was supposed to give Last Rites.”
“Didn’t they teach you how?”
“There was a lecture that pointed out the right prayer. My tutor made me read it through twice. But it’s not the same when a man is looking at you fearfully and his wife is crying. Even the kitchen maid was crying. I almost joined in.”
“You’d get used to it,” Devin suggested.
“That’s easy for a duke to say,” his cousin retorted. “If you stand around in silk holding a snuffbox, you’ve done the job. But if a man stands around looking like a vicar, people expect him to save souls!”
Otis had a point.
Even if Otis hadn’t been wearing a canary-yellow waistcoat, Devin could see that his cousin would be unbelievable in the role.
“I can’t do it. I won’t disgrace myself by trying again either. Spare sons shouldn’t be shunted into the church with the idea that it’s suitable employment for a gentleman. I don’t know how the rest of them get around the soul-saving part, but I’m not fitted for the role, and that’s that.”
Devin couldn’t disagree.
“Your father will be very disappointed,” he observed. His uncle, Sir Reginald Murgatroyd, had his heart set on his younger son entering the church.
“He made that point repeatedly last night, but as I told him, he’s not the one who is supposed to be clearing the way for people to line up at the Pearly Gates. I don’t know how you can stand it in here,” Otis added, looking about Devin’s study. “I haven’t been in this study for years, and it’s even more ghastly than I remembered.”
The room was gloomy. It was a cavernous space, mostly populated by Greek gods, thanks to his father’s mania for collecting ancient statues—as well as wheelbarrows, Italian pottery, and wicker chairs, among other things.
When Devin inherited the estate, he had ordered his father’s collections confined by room, and divided between the townhouse and the ducal estates. The pantheon thronged in the townhouse study, where he had long ago learned the trick of ignoring them. Forty-four chiming clocks stayed in an extremely noisy bedchamber in Wales, while the wheelbarrows had their own outbuilding in Northamptonshire.
“All those blank eyes,” Otis said with a shiver. “Just look at that one.”
Devin glanced over his shoulder. “Perseus holding up the head of Medusa. The triumph of good over evil. It ought to be in your vein.”
“Revolting,” Otis declared. “If you don’t mind my saying the obvious, your father was as potty as a cracked vase. You should clear these out. Give them to a museum or something. Is that chamber upstairs still crammed with dead birds?”
Devin shrugged. “Unless they flew away. I haven’t opened the door in years, but Binsey told me recently that the housemaids are complaining about dusting. He wants to bring in some glass cabinets.”
“Hazel and I used to goad each other into creeping into that room at Christmas,” Otis said.
“What do you mean to do next?” Devin asked, having no interest in household arrangements.
“As I said, marry an heiress,” Otis replied promptly.
“Do you have one in mind?”
“Not yet. I thought I might find one somewhere in Europe. Your solicitor paid out the living a year ahead—you might want to reconsider that with your next vicar—so I’ve got money to take passage.”
Devin frowned. “Where in Europe?”
“Perhaps Spain,” Otis said. “Actually, anywhere but here, because Father bellowed at me last night, pretending he counted on me to save his soul, which is absurd. He apparently thought that a cassock gave me magic powers, but damn it, he’s known me my entire life. That would be like expecting you to empty the coal scuttle. It just ain’t going to happen.”
Definitely not, as regards the coal scuttle.
“Mind you, I’ll miss England. I’ll even miss these heart-warming talks of ours, Dev.”
Devin didn’t believe, on the whole, that expression of emotion was necessary. By the age of seven, he’d learned that a raised eyebrow could convey any number of emotions, and it was generally preferable t
o allow people to come to their own conclusions.
But Otis was irritating, cheerful, insouciant . . . family. Devin had kept the living in St. Wilfrid’s open because he wanted him nearby, preferably down the street in the vicarage. If forced to articulate it, Devin would have admitted that his life was satisfying but somewhat cold.
Otis and Hazel darted in and out of his house like fireflies, shining with warmth and cheer, and he treasured that.
“I’d prefer you didn’t leave for the continent,” he said. “I will need you to help a new vicar settle into the parish.”
“Help him with what?” Otis asked. “I was still mixing up the curates’ names until a couple of days ago, when I worked out a system to keep them straight. Gerdsby, goat, thanks to that unfortunate beard. Habblety, hound, due to his hangdog look. I can leave the new fellow a note explaining my classification. No need to say it in person.”
“I would be grateful if you would remain in England at least for the time being,” Devin said, adding, “If I’d known you were set against the church, I wouldn’t have encouraged your father when he steered you in that direction.”
“I wasn’t set against it until yesterday,” Otis said. “And I’m not leaving directly; I have to talk to the bishop, for one thing. These things don’t happen overnight, and I’d guess it will take at least three months for my request to be approved. I’m never putting on a cassock again, though. Wearing a gown doesn’t suit my sense of self.”
“I understand.”
“Mind you, I’m not looking forward to moving back home. The place is a madhouse, with my sister’s debut in the offing. My father imported a relic of an aunt from the country to act as a chaperone, and Hazel does nothing but complain that Aunt Elnora’s ideas are antiquated. Well, of course, they are. The poor woman was born a million years ago.”
“You could stay here. Or remain in the vicarage as my liaison,” Devin suggested. “After all, we had it renovated to your taste. There’s a fair chance that the next man won’t appreciate all that blue velvet, so you might as well enjoy it.”
