The Duke's Perfect Wife

by Jennifer Ashley

  They would have stood there all day, Hart and Eleanor facing each other, except that a large carriage rattled up to the front door. Franklin the footman, in his post outside, said something in greeting to the guest who stepped down from the carriage. Hart didn’t move.

  He was still standing there, facing Eleanor in tableau, when his youngest brother, Ian Mackenzie, ran into the back of him.

  Hart jerked around, and Ian stopped in impatience. “Hart, you are blocking the way.”

  “Oh, hello, Ian,” Eleanor said around Hart. “How lovely to see you. Have you brought Beth with you?”

  Ian prodded Hart’s shoulder with a large hand in a leather glove. “Move.”

  Hart pushed away from the door frame. “Ian, what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at Kilmorgan.”

  Ian came all the way in, swept a gaze over Eleanor, ignored Hart, and focused his whiskey-colored eyes on a point between Eleanor and Lord Ramsay.

  “Beth told me to send her love,” he said in his quick monotone. “You’ll see her at Cameron’s house when we go to Berkshire. Franklin, take the valises upstairs to my room.”

  Eleanor could feel the fury rolling off Hart, but he would not shout at her with Ian standing between them.

  Trust Ian to diffuse a situation, she thought. Ian might not understand what was going on, might not be able to sense the emotional strain of those around him, but he had an uncanny knack for controlling any room he walked into. He did it even better than Hart did.

  Earl Ramsay was another who could diffuse tension. “So glad to see you, Ian. I’d be interested to hear what you have to say about some Ming dynasty pottery I’ve found. I’m a bit stuck on the markings—can’t make them out. I’m a botanist, a naturalist, and a historian, not a linguist.”

  “You read thirteen languages, Father,” Eleanor said, never taking her gaze from Hart.

  “Yes, but I’m more of a generalist. Never learned some of the specifics of the ancient languages, especially the Asian ones.”

  “But we are going to Scotland,” Eleanor said. “On the moment. Remember?”

  Ian started for the staircase. “No, you will stay here in London until we journey to Berkshire. All of us. We go every year.”

  Hart, breathing hard, watched his brother go up. “This year is different, Ian. I’m trying to force an election.”

  “Do it from Berkshire,” Ian said, and then he was gone.

  “It sounds the best arrangement,” Alec Ramsay said with his usual cheerfulness. “Franklin, take our baggage back upstairs as well, there’s a good fellow.”

  Franklin murmured, “Yes, your lordship,” scooped up as many bags as his young arms could carry, and hurried up the stairs.

  “My lady?” One of the housemaids came in from the vestibule, looking calm, as though Eleanor and Hart hadn’t started a row in the middle of the front hall. “Letter’s come for you. Delivery boy gave it to me.”

  Eleanor thanked her and took it, making herself not snatch it out of the maid’s hand. Aware of Hart’s breath on her cheek, Eleanor turned over the envelope.

  For Lady Eleanor Ramsay, staying at number 8, Grosvenor Square. Same handwriting, same paper.

  Eleanor burst past Hart and through the vestibule before he could stop her, and ran outside into a cold wind. She looked frantically up and down the street for a sign of the delivery boy, but he had already disappeared into the traffic of the morning.

  Eleanor sought Ian an hour later and found him in Hart’s study. Hart had left the house already, bellowing at Marcel to make him decent before he’d banged out to his club or to Whitehall, or wherever he’d gone. Hart never bothered telling anybody.

  Ian sat at the desk, writing, and did not look up as Eleanor entered. His large frame filled the chair, his kilt flowing over his big legs. Across the room, his valet, Curry, stretched across a divan, snoring.

  Ian did not look up when Eleanor approached the desk. His pen went on moving, swiftly, evenly, ceaselessly. Eleanor saw as she reached him that he wrote not words, but strings of numbers in long columns. He’d already covered two sheets with these numbers, and as Eleanor watched, Ian finished a third paper and started a fourth.

  “Ian,” Eleanor said. “I beg pardon for interrupting…”

  Ian continued to write, his lips moving as his hand roved down the page.

  “Ian?”

  Curry yawned, moved his arm from over his eyes, and sat up. “Give up, yer ladyship. When ’e starts with the numbers, there’s no talking to ’im until ’e’s finished. Fibrichi’s sequences or something.”

  “Fibonacci numbers,” Ian corrected him without looking up. “That is a recurrence sequence, and I do those in my head. This is not one.”

  Eleanor pulled a straight-backed chair to the desk. “Ian, I very much need to ask you a favor.”

  Ian wrote more numbers, pen moving steadily, without pause. “Beth isn’t here.”

  “I know that. She couldn’t help me with this anyway. I need the favor from you.”

  Ian glanced up, brows drawing together. “I am writing Beth a letter, because she isn’t here.” He spoke carefully, a man explaining the obvious to those too slow to keep up with him. “I’m telling her I arrived safely and that my brother is still an ass.”

  Eleanor hid her smile at the last statement and touched the paper. “A letter? But this is all numbers.”

  “I know.”

  Ian redipped his pen, bent his head, and went back to writing. Eleanor waited, hoping he’d finish, look up again, and explain, but he did not.

  Curry cleared his throat. “Beggin’ your pardon, your ladyship. When ’e’s at it like that, you’ll not get much more from ’im.”

  Ian didn’t stop writing. “Shut it, Curry.”

  Curry chuckled. “Except for that.”

  Eleanor drew one of the finished pages to her. Ian had written the numbers in an even, careful hand, each two and five and six formed in an identical manner to all the other twos and fives and sixes, the rows marching in exactitude down the page.

  “How will Beth know what the numbers mean?” Eleanor asked.

  “Don’t get the pages out of order,” Ian said without looking up. “She has the key to decipher it at the other end.”

  Eleanor slid the paper back where she found it. “But why are you writing to her in code? No one will read these letters but you and Beth, surely.”

  Ian gave Eleanor a swift glance, his eyes a flash of gold. His lips twitched into one of his rare smiles, which vanished as he bent over the numbers again. “Beth likes it.”

  The smile, the look, tugged at Eleanor’s heart. Even in the fleeting glance, she’d seen great love in Ian’s eyes, his determination to finish this letter and send it to Beth so she could enjoy decoding it. A way to tell her sweet nothings that no one else could understand. Private thoughts, shared between husband and wife.

  Eleanor thought back to the day she’d first met Ian, when Hart had taken her to the asylum to see him. She’d found there a scared, lonely boy, arms and legs too large for his body, Ian enraged and frustrated because he could not make the world understand him.

  Hart had been amazed that Ian had actually talked to Eleanor, had even let her slide an arm around his shoulders—briefly. Unheard of, because Ian hated to be touched.

  That terrified youth was a far cry from the quiet man who sat here composing letters for his wife’s delight. This Ian could meet Eleanor’s eyes, if only for a moment, could let Eleanor in on a secret and smile about it. The change in him, the deep well of happiness he’d tapped, made her heart swell.

  She also remembered the time that she and Hart had worked out a secret code between themselves. Nothing as elaborate as Ian’s number sequences, but a way for Hart to send Eleanor a message when he would be too busy to meet her that day. In whatever city they happened to be in, he’d leave a hothouse flower—usually a rose—lying in the corner of a garden where it would not be seen by the casual passerby. In London, it would be
in Hyde Park at a certain crossing of paths, or in the garden in the middle of Grosvenor Square, under a tree nearest the center of it—Hart had made certain Eleanor had been given a key to the gardens very early in their courtship. In Edinburgh, he left them at their meeting spot in Holyrood Park.

  Hart could have sent a note, of course, when he had to back out of an appointment with her, but he said he liked knowing she’d walk by their meeting spot and see the signal that he was thinking of her. Eleanor realized, of course, that he must have sent someone, an errand boy perhaps, to leave the rose for her, but it had never failed to melt her heart. She’d pick up the flower and take it home, keeping it to remind her of him until they met again.

  The charmer, Eleanor thought. A way to disarm my anger whenever he had to put business first. The little flower with its hidden meaning had warmed her heart more than any apologetic note could have done, and he’d known that.

  Even nowadays, the rare times she found herself in Edinburgh or London, she’d glance to that spot in Hyde Park or Holyrood, still looking for the sign. The pang when she did not see it always surprised her.

  Eleanor sat for a time, letting the lump in her throat work out, while Ian went on writing, oblivious to her thoughts.

  “I don’t see your key,” Eleanor said when she could speak again. “How do you know what numbers to write down?”

  Ian shrugged. “I remember.”

  Curry chuckled again. “Don’t look so amazed, your ladyship. ’E’s got a mind like a gearbox, and ’e knows every click it makes. It’s right frightening sometimes.”

  “I can hear you, Curry,” Ian said, pen moving.

  “Aye, and you know I don’t tell lies about you. Best just ask ’im, yer ladyship. ’E’ll be here awhile.”

  Eleanor yielded to Curry’s wisdom. “The thing is, Ian, I want you to help me do something, and I don’t want you to tell Hart. I must ask that you promise to keep it from him. Will you?”

  Ian said nothing, his pen scratching in the stillness.

  “I’ll tell ’im to come ask you what you need,” Curry said. “When ’e’s come out of it.”

  Eleanor rose. “Thank you, Curry. But not a word to His Grace, please. Hart can be… well, you know how he can be.”

  Curry got himself to his feet and straightened his shirt. He cleared his throat. “A bit of advice, your ladyship,” he said. “Begging your pardon, and your pardon too, your lordship.” He turned his full gaze on Eleanor. “’Is Grace is a ’ard man, and ’e gets ’arder by the year. If ’e gets the prime minister– ship, the victory will make ’im like steel. I don’t think anyone will soften ’im then, not even you, your ladyship.”

  Curry’s dark eyes held truth. He was not a finely trained servant from an agency, but a pickpocket Cameron had rescued from the streets years ago. Curry got away with his rudeness and outspokenness because he looked after Ian with as much tenderness as a father would a son. The brothers believed that Ian had survived the asylum because Cameron had sent Curry to him.

  Ian finally set down his pen. “Curry doesn’t want to lose forty guineas.”

  Eleanor stared at him. “Forty guineas?”

  Curry turned brick red and didn’t answer. Ian said, “The wager that Hart will marry you. We made it at Ascot in June. Curry wagered forty guineas that you will say no. Ainsley wagered twenty on yes, and I wagered thirty. Mac said he bet thirty-five that you’d plant your heel in his backside. Daniel said…”

  “Stop!” Eleanor’s hands went up. “Are you telling me, Ian Mackenzie, that there’s a wager going around about whether I will marry Hart?”

  “Sorry, your ladyship,” Curry said. “You wasn’t supposed to know.” He shot Ian a glare.

  Eleanor curled her hands to fists. “Is Hart in on this?”

  “’Is Grace declined to participate,” Curry said. “So I’m told. I wasn’t there at the original wager. I came in after, like, when it went ’round the servants. But what I heard was that ’Is Grace mentioned the possibility of marrying, and your name came up.”

  Eleanor lifted her chin, her heart pounding. “Absolute nonsense. What was between me and Hart was long ago. Finished.”

  Curry looked embarrassed but not ashamed. Sorry he’s been caught, but not sorry he made the wager. “As you say, your ladyship.”

  Eleanor made herself march to the door. “Please send word when you’re finished, Ian, and we’ll talk then.”

  Ian had gone back to writing. Whether he’d heard Eleanor, she couldn’t be certain.

  Curry made a perfect butler’s bow to her. “I’ll tell ’im, your ladyship. Leave it to me.”

  “Thank you, Curry. And I will see to it that you win your wager.” With another glare at the small man, Eleanor lifted her chin, swept out of the room, and closed the door with a decided click.

  Blast you, Hart Mackenzie, Eleanor thought as she strode down the Strand, the maid assigned to look after her hurrying in her wake. Starting a wager that you’ll marry me. She gathered from Curry’s explanation that Hart had thrown out the announcement like a fizzing bomb and stood back to watch what happened. That would be just like him.

  She stopped and looked into a shopwindow, trying to catch her breath. She’d hopped out of the landau near St. Martin’s Lane, to the maid’s dismay, hoping a brisk walk would soothe her temper. It hadn’t quite worked.

  As she looked at the secondhand clocks displayed, Curry’s exact words came back to her—’Is Grace mentioned the possibility of marrying, and your name came up.

  The Mackenzie brothers had been quite keen that Eleanor should marry Hart when Hart first courted her, had rejoiced when Eleanor had accepted him. They’d been vastly sorry when Hart and Eleanor had parted, but Mac and Cam had told her, privately, that though they were unhappy about her decision, they completely understood. Hart was an arrogant bully and an idiot, and Eleanor was an angel for putting up with him as long as she had.

  Perhaps the brothers had taken Hart’s suggestion that it was time he married again to mean he’d set his sights on Eleanor. Wishful thinking and high hopes. Hart, she was certain, had never mentioned a name. He’d have been too careful for that.

  She would have to quiz Isabella closely about it. Isabella had much to answer for over this wager, and so did Ainsley, Cameron’s wife. Ainsley was one of Eleanor’s oldest friends, but neither she nor Isabella had bothered to mention this family betting pool to Eleanor.

  Eleanor walked on, her anger somewhat lessened but not quite. She decided to push her troubling thoughts aside and focus on her errand at hand.

  She’d decided to follow up on her idea that the photographs might have been found in a shop. People sold off photographs all the time to collectors or photography enthusiasts either privately or through shops dedicated to photos or photographic equipment. The Strand had several such places. Eleanor decided it worth her while to find out, subtly, whether any of them had acquired a collection of photographs of Hart Mackenzie in his altogether, and if so, to whom they’d sold them on to.

  The first two shops Eleanor entered turned up nothing, though she found a landscape photograph she bought for a tuppence to put in a little frame for her desk.

  A bell tinkled as Eleanor pushed open the door of the third shop, which was dusty and dim. Her maid, a young Scotswoman called Maigdlin, plopped herself down on a chair just inside the door, sighing in relief. She was a bit plump and disapproved of tramping through streets when there was a perfectly good landau handy.

  Eleanor seemed to be the shop’s only customer. The sign on the window announced that the proprietor specialized in photographs and other ephemera of actors and famous aristocrats. Boxes upon boxes stood on long tables, and Eleanor started patiently looking through them.

  Stage actors were popular here, with entire boxes devoted to Sarah Bernhardt and Lillie Langtry. Photographs of Wild West traveling shows livened up one corner, with Buffalo Bill Cody and a string of dancing girls and trick ropers filling one box, another holding Ameri
can Indians of various tribes in exotic costume.

  Eleanor found pictures of prominent Englishmen on a table against the far wall—an old one of the Duke of Wellington with his characteristic nose, quite a few of Mr. Gladstone and the now-deceased Benjamin Disraeli. Pictures of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort were popular, along with photographs of the Princess Royal, the Prince of Wales, and other members of the queen’s large family. Another box was filled with photographs from The Great Exhibition.

  Eleanor found several of Hart Mackenzie, Duke of Kilmorgan, but they were formal portraits. One was fairly recent—Hart standing tall in full Scottish dress, old Ben at his feet. One was a picture of him from the chest up, his broad shoulders filling the frame. The last was of Hart seated regally on a chair, his arm resting on the table beside him. He focused his eagle stare on the camera, eyes catching anyone who looked at him.