A Duke for Christmas

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  Then she was gone and Dom’s hands reached out to capture the night air and the remembrance of a few stolen moments. He watched her marry his rival the next morning and did not stay for the wedding breakfast. The only moment he could think of afterward without wanting to hide under a rock was when she kissed him. The fact that she’d even considered the embraces of another man told him that Broderick Banner was the wrong man for her, whether she’d admit it or not.

  Of course, he hadn’t wasted much time repining. After a while, he’d taken to marveling at his own folly. What would he have done if she’d agreed to go with him to Gretna? Dominic told himself he’d had a narrow escape and threw himself into the follies and fun available to a young, wealthy, and titled gentleman. Yet at least once a month, Sophie Lindel Banner would appear in his dreams, always warm and smiling, inviting him to follow her into the realms of sleep, where anything might happen but never quite did.

  His dreams were in his thoughts now as he waited for the Attendez Moi to make port. It had been slightly more than three years since that night in the garden at Finchley Place. The girl who had married the next day wouldn’t be on that ship. Too much had happened. He wasn’t that impulsive anymore.

  Dominic reminded himself that he was here only because Kenton had requested this service of him. So far as his behavior went, he was meeting the sister-in-law of his oldest friend in order to give her his protection on the journey to her home. That evening of moonlit madness had happened to two other people a world away. He wouldn’t mention it, wouldn’t even think about it. The man who had offered Sophie Lindel his heart had nothing to do with him. Furthermore, there wasn’t even a Sophie Lindel anymore. Only Sophie Banner, whom he had yet to meet.

  It was with this resolution in mind that he stood on the dock an hour later, looking up at the tumble-home sides of a ship. The Attendez Moi was far from sizable, her paint sun-faded and chipped, the sails—now sagging down—dun-colored, and the crew as unkempt as rescued castaways.

  A woman stood by the railing, her boat cloak falling straight from her shoulders to the deck. Pink flooded her cheeks as she put up a hand to capture the floating strands of golden hair that had fallen from the knot on the back of her head. Her gaze swept over the docks, not as if she were looking for anything in particular but as though she were simply absorbing everything she could see.

  Even if he hadn’t recognized her, Dom’s gaze would have been irresistibly drawn to her. Her face bore an expression of breathless anticipation, half joy, half dread. Dominic wondered whether he himself bore a similar expression. She obviously hadn’t seen him. He wished with sudden violence that he hadn’t come to collect her, no matter how beholden he might be to Kenton and his wife.

  As he watched, trying to decide whether to dodge behind some barrels or just stand out in clear sight, she turned away with a start. A man appeared to stand beside her at the railing. Dominic didn’t like the look of him at all. He had a pleasant, open face with wide apart eyes that gave him an innocent air at odds with his extremely high forehead. They didn’t stand there for long. The man said something and Sophie nodded with a smile, stepping away from Dom’s sight.

  It seemed to take forever until the crew slid out the gangplank. Dominic occupied himself by pacing. Growing warm, he’d taken off his coat, throwing it over a barrel. He didn’t notice the cold, though everyone who hurried past was muffled up to the eyes against the sharp breeze blowing off the sea.

  The grinding fall of the gangplank brought him instantly to the edge of the dock. She wasn’t the first person off the boat. The Attendez Moi didn’t carry very many passengers and those who did disembark were not notable for their ton, being mostly shabby-genteel tourists and clerks about their business. A large family took considerable time to travel from the top of the gangplank to the bottom, the mother being troubled over some missing parcels.

  “Is that the lovebirds, Mary? No? Who has the lovebirds? Did you remember to collect the spoons, Arthur? I don’t want to leave the spoons. Oh, have you the lovebirds, William? I thought Mary had them. Well, then, who has Baby? Someone must go back for Baby. And the French poppet. Eva will be dreadfully upset if we forget... oh, you have Baby, Arthur? Then who has the spoons? And who has the poppet?”

  The whole party stopped in the middle of the gangplank, which bowed under their combined weight, while a child ran back to look for whatever miscellany they’d forgotten. Dominic met the eyes of the father of this hapless band in a look of male sympathy. The father ushered the rest of his family down to the ground with a murmured, “Mustn’t impede the others, my dear,” placing a guiding hand under his wife’s elbow.

  No sooner had she reached solid ground than she tottered and clutched her husband’s supporting arm. “Oh, mercy, how the ground heaves!”

  With open hand, Dominic indicated his coat-draped barrel. Once seated, the woman closed her eyes, her hand pressed to her bosom. “Better,” she breathed.

  “Thank you, sir,” the father said. Their children ranged in age from an infant in a basket to a young man blushing furiously for his parents’ imposition on a stranger.

  “Are you unwell, Mrs. Gibbs?” A swirl of a boat cloak passed him. Dominic turned to find Sophie on one knee beside the barrel.

  “She has yet to regain her land legs, Mrs. Banner,” Mr. Gibbs said.

  “Oh, yes. My maids are in the same condition. I myself feel more than a trifle off balance.”

  “Maids?” Dominic asked, looking around. This wasn’t at all how he’d imagined their meeting. He’d expected at

  least an acknowledgment of his presence and had hardly anticipated so many witnesses. Two young women, both

  blondes, stood beside a small heap of hand luggage, leaning on one another and looking about them with wide

  eyes.

  Sophie looked over her shoulder and smiled. “Hello, Dominic, it’s good to see you. Have you met the Gibbs family?”

  “Were you waiting for our dear Mrs. Banner?” This new interest straightened Mrs. Gibbs’s sagging spine. Under her raised eyebrows, she showed a pair of astonishingly sharp eyes. They were kindly but penetrating, oddly so for such a preoccupied woman. She studied Dominic with profound attention.

  “I’ve come to take her home,” he said, trying to not feel like a schoolboy caught stealing a pie. “Her mother and sister are waiting for her at home.”

  “Indeed?” she said suspiciously. Dominic began to wish he’d dressed more conservatively. Though his clothes were of the highest quality, with no aspirations toward dandyism, he did not dress like a parson or a solicitor or some other male with whom one might trust a widow. He dressed for the position he held in a nice taste which was his own and his tailor’s. It was evident by the look in Mrs. Gibbs’s eye that not even a long white beard would have allayed her suspicions of his being a vile seducer.

  “They could not come,” Sophie said clearly. “As I told you, ma’am, my sister is expecting her first child very soon and should not travel so far.”

  “Very wise,” Mrs. Gibbs said. “I have known the gravest injury to both mother and child through such imprudence. My cousin Eudora, for instance ...”

  The conversation threatened to become obstetrical when Sophie stood up too quickly, swayed a little, and held out a faltering hand to Dominic. “Oh, dear. How long do sea legs last?”

  “Not long,” he said, taking her hand in his, finding it stronger and harder than he remembered. There was muscle there that hadn’t come from embroidery. Her face, too, had changed. The soft contours of youth had passed, leaving a finely sculpted jaw and more evident cheekbones. Her eyes met his with steady friendliness and no trace of embarrassment. They might never have kissed under the full moon.

  Chapter Two

  Sophie hadn’t realized how much bloom she had lost until she saw Dominic Swift again. She had expected to see him sometime, of course. That would be inevitable. But she’d never imagined that it would be after a long sea journey, her hair askew, her cl
othes wrinkled, her skin pale and shiny, an incipient spot she could feel growing beside her nose. When one meets an old admirer, one wishes still to be admirable, she thought. Not that any of it really mattered; she had traveled a long way in every sense of the word from the garden at Finchley when he’d so charmingly expressed his admiration.

  “The journey?” she repeated. “It was not difficult once we departed Italy. The boat left early, but then it came back, so we sailed on it after all.”

  “I see,” he said. His voice had deepened and slowed over the intervening period. “Who are these people?”

  “The Gibbses? They’ve been traveling through Italy for the children’s health.”

  “No, not them. Them.” He waggled a finger subtly at Angelina and Lucia, standing by the luggage at the foot of the gangplank.

  “They are my landlady’s daughters,” Sophie said. “I couldn’t afford to pay the last three months’ rent, you see, so I agreed to bring them to England.” She refused to be embarrassed or coy about her financial difficulties. They were, after all, the chief reason for her return to her native country.

  “As hard up as that?” he asked, a certain humorous respect coming into his eyes.

  “Even more so. I had to sell my furniture for the fares. Besides, I like them very much. I have promised to teach them how to be ladies’ maids and to write them excellent references.”

  She stood up to go to them and felt his hand warm on her arm. “And the man?”

  “Man?” Sophie followed his gaze and saw Mr. Knox talking to the girls. His Italian was not as good as hers, but both Angelina and Lucia were paying close attention, not giggling as they usually did when any non-Italian tried to speak to them.

  “Oh, that’s Clarence Knox. He was a friend of my husband’s. He’s a poet, too.”

  Mr. Knox looked up and caught sight of her. He smiled at her in the way that she’d come half-consciously to dread. It held too much warmth, too much hope. One she could not return, and the other she could not bring herself to dash. Now they had come home, this friendship she had inherited would fade without the necessity of hurting his feelings. It could never ripen into anything else. Mr. Knox resembled Broderick too much in tone of mind to attract her. Besides, her tastes had never run to men shorter than herself with hair carefully brushed to conceal its thinning. Even that wouldn’t have prevented her if she’d found almost childlike round blue eyes and snub noses appealing.

  Dominic followed her across the dock, his footsteps firm and slow. She’d forgotten how tall he was. “Your Grace, may I present Mr. Clarence Knox? Mr. Knox, this is the Duke of Saltaire.”

  Mr. Knox actually took a step back, as anyone might when suddenly confronted with an inoffensive young man who turned out to have a title and a fortune reputed to be majestic in scope. Dominic hardly seemed to notice the man’s reaction. Perhaps he was used to it by now.

  They shook hands in that very cool English style. Sophie compared it to the sometimes overwhelming enthusiasm of the Italian male and knew she had truly come home.

  “Could you tell them where to send the luggage?” she asked Dominic, indicating the several crew members bringing down trunks on their shoulders. Most were dumped in front of the Gibbses.

  “Certainly,” he said, stepping away.

  “I had no notion that you were acquainted with anyone of such high degree,” Mr. Knox said in her ear. “Is that the famous Duke of Saltaire?”

  “Famous? I don’t know if I would describe him so.”

  “Come now, you must know the story. How he was a poverty-stricken nobody until careful investigation uncovered the truth. I believe Armstrong Blevely was writing an epic on the subject.”

  “Armstrong wrote many an epic—in his head,” Sophie said tartly. “Never a one on paper that I ever heard tell of. The last I heard, he’d taken a position in his uncle’s relish manufactory.” Her late husband had poured scorn on the fallen poet for his choosing Gentlemen’s Pickle over the divine fee, but Sophie herself only wished that there’d been a going concern connected with the name of Banner, even if it had been connected with marmalade or horseshoe nails.

  “Alas, poor Blevely,” Mr. Knox said, shaking his head.

  “Still, it’s a tale worthy of an epic. I heard tell he was working in a blacksmith’s when they told him he was the heir to a dukedom.”

  “No. He was a writer.”

  “A writer?”

  “Grub Street, I believe. But we’ve never actually discussed the matter.” Not, at least, in any circumstances that she’d care to share.

  “What a fate to befall one,” Mr. Knox said, half to himself. “So much wealth and fine position and all through a mere accident of fate.” He smiled at her, returning to the present. “Ah, well, no such fairies attended my christening,” he said ruefully. “My father was a simple justice of the peace whose family line was as clear as a black line upon white paper. Not the slightest chance that some surprising rich relations will suddenly point to me and say, ‘Thou art the man to inherit my riches.’ More’s the pity. I shall have to win my fortune by other means.”

  “Your pen, perhaps?”

  His eyes suddenly moist, Mr. Knox reached out to grasp her hands. “Poor Broderick was taken from us too soon,” he said earnestly. “I know, had he lived longer, we all would have been the better for it. Not just you, his loving wife, and I, his dearest friend, but the world will suffer from the loss of his talents, whether it knows it or not.”

  “Yes,” she said, moved more for his sake than for her own. “I shall do what I can to bring his work to the world.”

  “Then you mean to proceed with publication?”

  “If I can. I owe it to his memory.”

  He raised her hands to his chest and pressed them there. “If I can be of any assistance in this great work, I pray ... I beg ... you will call upon me. Though you kept Broderick’s heart, I feel I had some insight into the workings of his mind. I would gladly give all my time to your aid.”

  With an effort, she freed her captive hands. “You’re too kind, Mr. Knox. I have your address in town. If I need your help, be assured I shall call for it.”

  Sophie became aware that Dominic waited for her. With a bright smile that belied her true feelings, she said good-bye to Mr. Knox. Picking up one of her valises, she motioned to the two Italian girls to follow her. “Andiamo, mia ragazzi. Follow the gentleman.”

  Dominic seemed to be scanning the faces of the dockside idlers. “Ah, there he is,” he said. “And he’s brought a barrow for your baggage.”

  “Your servant?” she asked, eyeing the ragtag figure approaching.

  “No, but I’m considering attaching him to my service. He’s an unusual character. I’d best not, though. He’d give my valet an apoplexy.”

  Strange to walk arm-in-arm with anyone but Broderick. Dominic Swift was much taller than her late husband, and Sophie was surprised to find how comforting it was to press through a crowd with him. His care to guard her from the carelessness of passing strangers was equaled by his ability to do so. No one had ever stepped aside for Broderick, no matter how he swaggered. But roads seemed to open when Dominic came near and it couldn’t be that everyone knew who he was. He wasn’t that famous.

  She kept her eyes upon the two girls, smiling at them reassuringly whenever they looked back. Angelina was rolling her eyes from side to side like a frightened horse, amazed and frightened by strange sights, sounds, and smells. Lucia also looked around her, but, as had been true from the start of their acquaintance, it was with lively curiosity and the most intense desire to acquire knowledge. Before them, as if leading a procession, came the beached sailor, pushing the barrow and keeping up a constant commentary as if he’d appointed himself guide and preceptor to the two foreigners, little though they might understand.

  It seemed a long way to the inn. She had cause to be glad of Dom’s arm. “I am not accustomed to walking more than the length of the deck,” she panted at the top of a hill. “I had
no notion I was so out of condition.”

  “Do you still feel the motion of the boat?”

  “Not so much, though I should be glad to sit down. And, oh, a cup of tea. Real tea. I’ve been dreaming of it every night.”

  “Don’t they have tea in Italy?”

  She peeped up at him suspiciously. Was he laughing at her? His face remained grave but there was a smile in his voice.

  “Yes, they do. But it’s rather expensive and somehow never tastes right. I think it’s the water in Rome.”

  His smile broke through his reserve. “I think the Golden Hind will run to a cup of tea. Perhaps even an entire pot.”

  “Then let’s hurry.” Having caught her breath, she tried to pull him along. She might as well have tried to pull the Attendez Moi, though he consented to move at last with a resigned smile upon his face.

  When she reached her bedchamber, the landlady was there, stripping the sheets off the bed. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” Sophie said, hesitating on the threshold.

  “You are Mrs. Banner? That valet told me to change your linen. As if sheets in my house are ever damp!”

  She stood with her hands on her thin hips, her woolen overskirt kilted up to show a flowered flannel petticoat underneath. Her white cap was shoved back on her graying hair and she bore harassed lines on her forehead.

  “I’m sorry for the extra trouble,” Sophie said. “What valet is this?”

  “A lanky pin-shanks by the name of Fissing. He’s poked his long nose into my kitchens, dug in my cellars, and sneered at my sheets. I’ll pull his long nose if I see it again, so help me.”

  “He’s the Duke’s man?”

  “Aye, he is. To hear him speak, you’d think this house had never entertained any titled folk before. Why, the Earl of Kinton himself was pleased to praise my shortbread. And Lady Moira O’Connell told me that if I ever was wishful to stop running this inn, she’d take me on as housekeeper without a second thought. And at a very good stipend too, for all it’d mean living in Ireland.”