He gazed at the marchioness in consternation. “Are you concerned that Miss Blake—er, the Duchess of Edencourt will be allowed to inherit before you?”
“Not in the slightest. I hope she does.” The marchioness smiled at him, her eyes brilliant with momentary fondness for him. She truly was a beauty, wasn’t she? That golden hair—those stunning eyes—
The duke snapped his fingers before Stickley’s face. “Ease back on the candlepower, Dee. The bloke’s not used to it.”
Stickley cleared his throat and fiddled with his neckcloth. “Er . . . yes. Well. Excuse me . . . what?”
Lady Marbrook put a hand on Stickley’s arm. “Sir, we want the duchess to inherit the Pickering fortune.”
“She deserves it,” the marchioness agreed stoutly. “I don’t need it.”
Lady Marbrook smiled. “Neither do I.”
The duke nodded. “But most importantly, we need to obtain Mrs. Blake’s assurance that she will not press charges for the theft of her daughter’s money.”
Stickley sniffed. That was a legitimate concern, for even a duchess could be accused of a crime. “Mrs. Blake ought to have informed us of her daughter’s death immediately.” Then he relented. “Or as soon as she felt able to, in her grief.”
The marchioness muttered something like “which means never” but that couldn’t be, for the marchioness was the image of ladylike propriety.
Mrs. Blake snarled. “I’m due what I’m due. No one steals from me, not even a stick-shaped orphan!”
Stickley shared worried glances with the duke and his two lovely companions. The entire arrangement wouldn’t work if the woman wouldn’t cease her vendetta and claim the duchess as her legal daughter.
WHEN SADIE WOKE in her room at Brook House, Deirdre’s new maid, the one she’d taken with her on her journey, was brushing out the pink gown from yesterday.
Her wedding dress, to be perfectly accurate. She’d chosen it because it was that single pale perfect shade of pink that even girls with reddish locks could wear. She’d felt beautiful and feminine and desired in it.
It seemed like so long ago.
The new girl, Jane, smiled at Sadie when she saw her eyes were open. “Good morning, Your Grace. Would you like tea? Should I ask for breakfast to be served in here?”
Sadie blinked. Your Grace. She wondered how long it would take to get used to that.
Breakfast came and went. Sadie donned a morning gown of cool green silk and wandered downstairs. She hadn’t the vaguest idea what to do with herself. Should she journey back to Edencourt by herself to help the cottagers? Should she wait here for Graham to send for her—which might never happen? Or should she hop the soonest ship out of port and be the Duchess of Edencourt in America, where everyone would be duly impressed and she could dine out on her title for the rest of her life without paying a dime?
Of all the options, she longed to go back to Edencourt. Not simply because Moira and her children needed the help, but because that single day and night at Edencourt had been the closest thing Sadie had ever known to being home.
Most women aren’t afraid their husbands will throw them out when they are discovered at “home.”
She was loitering in the front parlor when she heard the knocker. A moment later Fortescue came to the parlor. “Lady Tessa and Mr. Somers Boothe-Jamison, Your Grace.”
“Really?” Sadie frowned. “How . . . odd.”
“Darling!” Tessa sailed in and bestowed an auntly kiss on Sadie’s cheek. Since it was the first such she’d ever received, Sadie could be excused for ducking ever so slightly, so that the kiss landed on her ear. For Mr. Boothe-Jamison, however, she had a sincere smile. “How is your fine horse, sir?”
Somers grinned. “He’s just fine, Your Grace. The only reminder of his ordeal is a tendency to lie down whenever possible.”
Tessa fluttered. “Sit down, So—er, Sa—darling! Somers insisted that I come to call on you today—to see if you are well and if you need anything.” Tessa stared at her with intent cheer. “You don’t need anything, do you?”
Somers cleared his throat. “Tess, we discussed this. I don’t want to have to remind you again.”
Tessa giggled and fluttered her eyelashes at Somers. “Yes, my love.”
Tessa giggled?
Sadie abruptly wondered if she had, in fact, not actually woken up this morning but even now lay dreaming in her bed upstairs. No, it couldn’t be a dream. She’d have to be mad to come up with something outrageous like a girlish, fluttering Tessa who giggled!
She blinked rapidly and turned back to Tessa. “Ah . . . what is it you wanted to tell me?”
Tessa sent Somers one last worshipful glance and then let out a deep sigh. “Somers made me come here today to apologize to you.”
That wasn’t very helpful. There were so many things for Tessa to apologize for that Sadie simply didn’t know where her aunt ought to begin. I’m sorry I plotted against you would be a great start, but that would simply never happen.
“I’m sorry I plotted against you,” Tessa said without a trace of irony or double-edged commentary. “I ought not to have sent for Mrs. Blake. I only meant to get you in trouble with your mother, not cause a nationwide scandal.”
Somers folded his arms. “No excuses, Tess. Take full responsibility for your actions.”
“All right. I might have been hoping for a nationwide scandal, but I had no idea the secret was that good.” She shrugged. “Why in the world did you even bother to invite me?”
Sadie could only stare at her, stunned. One harmless-looking young man had the predatory Lady Tessa wound firmly around his pinkie finger.
“It wasn’t personal, Sadie. Graham is family, but I had every hope of Deirdre winning, even then.”
“But she doesn’t need the money, Tessa,” Sadie said.
“The money isn’t the point, dear,” Tessa explained crisply. “Winning is. Winning is always the point.” Then she left, mooning at the new man in her life even as they walked arm in arm from the house.
OF ALL THE people who had come and gone through Brook House over the ten years of his supremacy there, Sophie–Sadie Westmoreland, the Duchess of Edencourt, was one of John Herbert Fortescue’s favorites. Like him, she had risen by wit and resilience from bad beginnings to a better place. Like him, she had made mistakes along the way. People had been lied to—people who had deserved to know the truth. Furthermore, like him, the strangely graceful and elegant duchess had been abandoned by the person she’d most wanted to stand by her.
Fortescue watched the duchess as she leaned by the front window of the parlor and gazed unseeing at the city outside. The man she waited for wasn’t coming. Everyone knew that, including the duchess herself. The Duke of Edencourt had been publicly humiliated. London was agog. The very streets and parks rang with laughter at his gullibility. A man didn’t quickly forget a betrayal like that.
How would you know? Patricia refused you because you’re a liar and fraud.
And then she’d left, taking his cracked heart with her into the night. He had no idea where she had gone.
Start with County Clare. On the cliffs. How many O’Malleys can there be in a hundred miles of coastline?
In Ireland? Hundreds, probably. Yet . . . it was possible that he could find her. What would he say? How could he deny that he was a liar—that he’d been ashamed of his pedigree and had spent the last fifteen years eradicating it from his very thoughts?
Until she came, with emerald eyes and hair of fire and the sound of home in the lilt of her voice.
Home. He’d left so long ago, determined never to look back, to shake the “mud of the potato fields” from his boots forever, to seek a better life, a better route . . . to where? In the end, all routes led to the same place.
Who would mourn him when he died?
The silver will miss the hell out of you.
I don’t think the brass knocker can survive the loss.
What was the point in being the best b
utler in London if no one stood at his side to give a damn? What was yet another day of impeccable servitude without that lilting, teasing voice giving him what for over his pomposity, or those shining eyes seeing to the needs and cares of those around her, or that magnificent hair tumbling down onto his pillows at evening’s end?
“I resign.”
At the window, across the parlor, the duchess didn’t startle in the slightest at his sudden declaration. “I don’t blame you,” she said without turning. “You’ll not find another girl like Patricia in this lifetime.”
“I resign.” Saying it again made it more solid. “I resign at once.”
The duchess breathed a soft gust of laughter and leaned her head against the window embrasure. “I heard you. Now go tell the marquis.”
“The marquis.” Oh, hell. He turned away, his gut chilled at the thought of abandoning the lord he’d served for so long. It had been a privilege to serve such a man. It was a rotten trick to abandon him so suddenly.
“Fortescue?”
He turned back, grateful for the momentary reprieve. “Yes, Your Grace?”
“Do you think she’ll forgive you?” She turned to him at last, her gray eyes damp and luminous. “I don’t know what you did, but it must have been terrible for her to run away like that.”
Fortescue nodded. “I did . . . what you did, Your Grace.”
She smiled sadly. “I thought as much. Lementeur said that we always recognize each other, even when we can’t recognize ourselves.”
Can’t recognize ourselves. “I know myself again,” Fortescue said, the Irish boiling through his blood. The pull of home was so ferocious he could hardly breathe. Home. Patricia.
The words held the same meaning.
The duchess nodded. “I’m very happy for you. If you see me lying around anywhere, be sure to tell me to find me again, as well.”
Fortescue gave her a crisp bow of respect, not entirely because of her title. “It would be my pleasure, Your Grace.”
She waved a hand. “Go on, then. And don’t worry. Calder is all squishy love-struck gumdrop these days. He’ll hardly bite at all.”
Fortescue straightened, then let the façade of perfect English servant slide away forever. He gave one of the most highly ranked ladies in London a cheeky grin.
“Ye’re a grand girl, Sadie. He’s a whiskey-blinded fool to let ye go.”
She let a smile light those storm-cloud eyes for the merest instant. “Get on with ye, ye great flirt,” she replied, her imitative Irish lilt so terrible it was almost right. “Go tell the master you’ve had enough of wipin’ his gold-plated arse.”
With a laugh, John Herbert Fortescue took his last order from an English aristocrat and, turning on his heel, promptly did precisely as he was told.
Chapter Thirty-three
After a time, Sadie wearied of her vigil at the window. Graham wasn’t coming.
And even if he did, she couldn’t bear to face him. What could she say to him but that yes, she was a liar and a thief and, yes, she had seduced him to force him to marry her.
All in good cause? That sounded a bit thin when there was no Pickering fortune to compensate for her transgressions.
No matter where she went or what she did, she knew she didn’t want to stay here. She couldn’t expect Deirdre to avoid Graham for the rest of her life. She certainly couldn’t bear to see him taking mistresses over the years, yet what else could happen? She could stay and help at Edencourt, but her skills were paltry. Though she would gladly serve them, she wasn’t sure she would be much good. She would only cause strife when she encountered Graham there, anyway.
Going to her room, she began to pack. Traveling clothes in one trunk. Her Lementeur creations in another. She was running out of room.
In the chest of drawers she found her translations. They were all there, from the story of Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, to the Summer and Winter Garden, and of course, Cinderella.
Overwhelmed with memories and sadness, she sat down to read Cinderella again.
She sat down on a stool, took her foot out of the heavy wooden shoe, and put it into the slipper that fit her perfectly. After she stood up and the prince looked her straight in the face, he recognized the beautiful maiden who had danced with him. “This is my true bride!” he exclaimed.
Why was she torturing herself with this story? She put it away from her. For a moment she was tempted to throw it and all her other translations into the fire, but then she thought that, if nothing else, she might bind them up and give them to Meggie.
A good-bye gift.
The room had been returned to its former unused state. Every sign that Sadie Westmoreland had ever existed had been erased. It had been altogether easy to do so, in fact. After all, she had always lived on the outside edge of true existence. Never a real home, never a real family, never a real love.
Oh, my love. My everlasting love.
She closed her eyes against the memory of the look in Graham’s eyes the last time she’d seen him. She shouldn’t have let him go through with the wedding ceremony. His honor wouldn’t have allowed him to stop it, but she could have fled, or shouted “Fire!”, or something to save that stubborn fool from himself.
And from her.
Annulment was still a possibility. She planned to pay a visit to that bishop on her way out of London. If blackmail worked for Graham, it ought to work for her just as well.
A footman knocked at the door. “His Grace has come to call, miss.”
Sadie glanced up to be sure that the key had been turned in the lock. “Tell His Grace that he needn’t bother ejecting me. I’m leaving London very shortly anyway.”
“Yes, miss,” the man said doubtfully. Poor fellow, having Fortescue’s duties thrust into his untrained hands.
Then she heard Graham’s voice in the hall, raised in protest. Hungry for the merest scrap of him, she rose and pressed her ear to the door.
“Damn it, don’t you have the bloody key?”
The footman murmured something. Sadie hoped Fortescue had taken the keys with him and dropped them off a cliff. She loved Graham. She needed Graham.
She would not allow herself to have the tiniest bit of Graham. He deserved better.
Besides, she couldn’t bear to face him.
There wasn’t another sound out in the hall. Disappointed, Sadie stepped back from the door and dropped her face into her hands. “Oh, my love,” she whispered.
Then she heard a thud and a muffled curse. She lifted her head and gasped at the man sprawled on the floor by the window, coatless, his sleeve torn and a sprig of leaves in his hair.
He winced, then grinned up at her. “Isn’t this the way they do it in those stories of yours?”
She gaped, unable to speak. Then she swallowed harshly and moved back a step, though she longed to rush forward.
Yes, rush! Rush!
She shook her head, denying him, denying herself. “I can’t see you!”
He sat up and brushed at his weskit. “Then you’re not looking hard enough. I’m here and I can prove it. I’ve made a proper mess on the rug.”
She laughed damply, then pressed her hands over her face, covering her eyes. “Stop! Stop making light! You know you shouldn’t be here!”
“No, I don’t,” he said, his voice gentle. “Explain it to me.”
She shook her head. “Don’t you know there must always be a penance paid in these stories? The liar always comes to a bad end. Hoist on his own petard.”
“Oh, that,” he said dismissively. “Well, don’t worry on that account. You didn’t lie.”
In her surprise, she forgot about not looking at him. She dropped her hands and stared. “I didn’t?”
He didn’t stand as she’d thought he might, but only remained relaxed on the floor, sitting tailor fashion with his hands draped easily over his knees. He smiled up at her, his green eyes alight. “I could explain it to you, but you’re right—you must pay a price first.”
She g
ulped air, hope and despair a warring tempest in her belly. “Wh—what price?”
He held out his hand. “You have to help me up. That climb was painful. I’ve hurt my . . . my petard.”
Laughing shakily, she moved forward to tentatively take his hand. The instant his fingers closed around hers, he gave a mighty tug.
With a faint shriek, she fell into his arms. He pulled her close and rolled the both of them until he lay above her, toe to toe, nose to nose, on the floor. He smiled down at her astonishment. “See? We still fit.” He pulled something from his waistcoat pocket and slipped it onto her finger. “You’re the only one who fits.”
Sadie blinked at the lovely ring. “Where did you get this?”
“It was my mother’s.” When Sadie gasped and made to remove it, he placed his hands over hers, stopping her. “She was the Duchess of Edencourt. So are you. It is your ring now.”
Sadie protested again but her will was weakening. She loved the ring. She wanted the ring.
Besides, he’d climbed a tree to give it to her. A man will do astonishing things for a woman he is ardent about.
If he pulled away from her now and disdained her forever, if she stepped in front of speeding cart tomorrow, if the world ended this evening—she would always have this moment. Without an instant’s hesitation, she wrapped her arms about his neck and pulled him down for a kiss that might have to last her the rest of her life.
She’d never been a wasteful sort.
A while—quite a while, in fact—later, Graham came up for air. “Sophie—” He cleared his throat. “Sorry.” He began again. “Miss Westmoreland, would you care to accompany me to the parlor? There’s something there I think you should see.”
Sadly, for the moment was gone and might never come again, Sadie smiled and let him rise. “Miss Westmoreland? Need we be so formal, Graham?”
He held up a restraining hand. “Now, now—we mustn’t speak. We’ve not been properly introduced.”
Giving a small, helpless bark of laughter, she rose as well and let him lead her from the room. At least he wasn’t letting go of her hand.
Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 03] Page 24
