What a Difference a Duke Makes

by Lenora Bell

  “I can’t.”

  “Can’t? Or won’t.”

  “She and the children left for Southend an hour ago.”

  “You’re an idiot.” Grafton shook his head and a scrap of metal fell to the ground. “You should have gone with them.”

  “So everyone seems to think.” He’d wanted so badly to go with them. But he had to be here.

  “Trust me on this one, friend.” Grafton clapped him on the shoulder. “You need a holiday in the worst way.”

  “I’m not going to abandon this project. Abandon you. When we’re so close.”

  “Life’s short.” Grafton flicked his hair out of his eyes. “Go spend time with your family. Take a holiday. The work will be here when you get back.”

  Go spend time with your family. Take the children to Lumley’s. Go visit Mother.

  Everyone was giving him the same message. The foundry had swallowed him, subsuming human interactions.

  “And after you marry that governess,” said Grafton, “you two can name your firstborn son after me.”

  “Pardon?” Edgar choked on the word.

  “Don’t pretend you haven’t thought about it.”

  “What, marrying her? Or naming my heir Ambrose?”

  “I can tell you from experience, that being named Ambrose is the quickest way to ensure your son will be strong, manly, and fearless.” Grafton preened, flexing his sturdy arms. “If you don’t like Ambrose, there’s always my middle name. Percival.”

  “I’m not naming my heir Ambrose. Or Percival. In fact, I’m not siring an heir at all. Now would you please drop the subject?”

  “Not until you chase after that governess of yours and don’t stop until you’re holding her hand as you run along the sparkling sands of Southend. And splashing about in the surf. And rolling—”

  Edgar groaned, cutting Grafton’s speech short. “I can’t go frolic at the seaside. Not when there’s work to be done here.”

  “Then I’ll just have to keep suggesting names for your heir until you leave. How about Ethelbert? Or Pearl?”

  “Pearl?” choked Edgar.

  “I knew a boy named Pearl once, poor fellow. Ambrose will make a man tougher. Pearl will crush his spirit from the start.” Grafton shook his head. “What about Gruffyd? A good, strong Welsh name. Or there’s Archibald . . . though one wouldn’t want to curse the poor thing’s pate. Or—”

  “I’m leaving, I’m leaving.” Edgar headed toward the exit.

  Maybe the answers he sought would arrive more easily when he was walking along the seashore with two playful, chaotic, exuberant children. Seeing life through their eyes. The newness, the wonder and the endless possibilities.

  Maybe the answers would come to him more readily when he was right where he wanted to be. With Mari.

  Envying the wind for ruffling her hair and the sun for kissing her freckles.

  When Edgar arrived back home, he informed Robertson that he was riding to Southend, since Mrs. Fairfield had already sent his trunk ahead of him.

  Robertson merely nodded, his mask of implacability restored, but Edgar thought he detected a sparkle in his eyes.

  “Very good, Your Grace. You may deliver this letter to Miss Perkins. It could be important, as it’s from a lawyer in Cheapside.”

  Edgar accepted the letter. “Now I’m the postman?”

  Robertson wisely refrained from commenting.

  “Please say hello to Miss Perkins and the children for us,” said Mrs. Fairfield, bustling into the room.

  “Would you like to come as well?” Edgar asked, thinking that his housekeeper could probably could use a holiday as well.

  “Oh no, Your Grace. I’ll use the opportunity to inventory the silver. Do have a splendid time. I’m sure the Royal Hotel will be quite comfortable. Though it won’t be the same as the old house.”

  Edgar hadn’t been back to Southend since the fire. The thought of seeing all the familiar sights filled his heart with longing, and a conflicting sense of dread.

  He’d only been a little older than the twins when his father had attempted to burn the house down, with Edgar and India still inside.

  Blinking away the memory, Edgar walked to the window. “It looks like rain. I’d better leave.”

  “Does it?” asked Mrs. Fairfield, joining him at the window. “And here I thought that the sun was trying to pierce through the clouds.”

  Chapter 25

  “Miss Perkins, we’ve been expecting you.” The porter in his smart black livery bowed low, for all the world as if she were a duchess. “Master Michel, is it? And Miss Adele?”

  The children nodded, too exhausted after the daylong journey in Edgar’s traveling coach for their usual chatter.

  “Right this way please,” said the porter. “You’ve the entire uppermost floor of the hotel. I believe His Grace won’t be joining you?”

  Mari shook her head. “He will not.” She tried to keep the disappointment from her voice, though she must have been unsuccessful because the porter glanced at her sharply.

  He ushered them down a hall to an open-well stair with a wreathed handrail. As they climbed, their way was lit by the last rays of the setting sun, shimmering through a glazed, domed roof lantern.

  During the journey the children had forgotten their disappointment in the general excitement of new sights and new roads. They’d talked the entire way, playing word games and singing songs.

  She’d joined in the singing, but her heart hadn’t been present.

  It wasn’t only Edgar’s occupation that kept him in London. It was a reluctance to allow their—whatever this was between them—to deepen, to evolve.

  The sea had opened before her eyes, spreading its blue-green mantle across the horizon, and her heart had opened as well, letting her know in no uncertain terms that she longed for Edgar to be there with her and the children, witnessing her first glimpse of the sea.

  Even inside the hotel the air smelled salty and there was a breeze from the sea in the very voices of the staff.

  “Would you like to see the Assembly Room?” the porter asked when they arrived at the first floor. “There’s a very fine Venetian window.”

  “We’ll explore tomorrow, I think,” said Mari. The twins plodded next to her, their movements wooden with fatigue.

  He led them to the upper floor and into a handsome sitting room with mullioned windows that would no doubt have a splendid view of the sea in the morning.

  “Oh la la la la.” Adele rubbed her eyes. “This will do, I’d say.”

  The porter took his leave and a maid and two footmen arrived with a hot supper for them. The children were almost too tired to eat, their little chins nodding toward their chests.

  Michel yawned.

  “Bedtime for tired children,” said Mari, when the asparagus soup and roast pheasant had been devoured.

  The maid, who told Mari that her name was Harriet, assisted Mari with putting the children to bed in a high, enormous bed with heavy purple velvet curtains festooned with gold tassels.

  “It’s the royal apartments, miss,” she said to Mari, almost apologetically. “We’re not used to having small children.”

  “Well they certainly won’t be hurt if they fall out of bed. This carpet is thick as my ankle.”

  She wasn’t supposed to mention the richness of carpets, probably, but she was so tired of maintaining her ruse of superiority.

  “Thank you, Harriet.” She could even thank the servants.

  The children were asleep before she even left their room, which adjoined her grand suite of rooms.

  Such extravagance.

  An entire floor of a hotel for one charity school governess and two illegitimate children.

  It was a stark reminder that she and Edgar belonged in separate worlds. The intimacies they had shared could never mean as much to him as they had to her.

  He was wealthy, titled, and experienced in the ways of the world.

  Probably this time apart was for the best. Ma
ybe she would regain her senses and refocus her attention on the children, and her true purpose for seeking employment as their governess.

  When they returned to London she would redouble her efforts. Visit every Ann Murray she could find and make inquiries about Mr. Shadwell.

  Temporary, fleeting pleasures could never provide the answers she sought.

  A cold, solitary bed might be lonely, but it was all she’d ever known.

  “No dawdling, Miss Perkins!” The next morning, the children flew ahead of her, tripping merrily down the pathway to the beach.

  A manservant and maid followed with blankets, and baskets containing all of the children’s toys and books.

  The day was fine, the sun shining through the clouds.

  Michel sniffed the air. “It doesn’t smell precisely right, but it will do.”

  Adele hugged herself. “It will more than do, Michel. I didn’t know England could be so sparkling.”

  Mari found the specimen boxes from Lumley’s and set the twins to the task of finding and identifying all of the minerals and rocks listed.

  The sun sparkling on the water filled her mind with golden light.

  The colors were muted here. Grays and tans, browns and golds. Speckled over rocks and painting sand and charred pieces of wood from fires past. The delineations between the clouds and the sea. Strong lines sketched in gray, white, and cobalt.

  In the distance, a rock that looked like a spiny, barnacled sea monster, its head beneath the waves, stood ready to rise and devour them all.

  “Is this malachite?” Adele brought her a greenish stone.

  “I don’t believe so. That would occur perhaps in Cornwall.” Mari opened the book of minerals and they pored over the colored plates.

  “It could be olivine,” said Adele.

  “We’ll make a notation for further study, shall we?”

  Adele placed the small rock in a box and Mari added a scrap of red silk ribbon, to indicate that they weren’t sure if it was olivine.

  The children were so happy here, so open and trusting. She was glad to have this opportunity to help guide them during this difficult transition in their lives.

  She’d fought for this escape from the narrow confines of the orphanage. The sea surrounded her, the widest vista she’d ever seen.

  The sand was soft beneath her fingers. She stretched her arms over her head, leaning back against a cushion, and the sun warmed her, penetrating her skin and finding her heart.

  The sea roared in the background, murmuring that Edgar was compassionate and caring. That he would learn how to spend time with the twins, how to give them love, instead of just possessions. Her feelings were layered like the gray and white clouds overhead. Blue sky was attempting to break through the clouds and doubt.

  Adele stretched out next to Mari, kicking her toes in the sand. “Are you happy, Miss Perkins?”

  “Very happy. The sea is more spectacular than I ever imagined.”

  “Isn’t it?” Adele picked up a speckled gray rock, smoothing it with her finger. “But there’s one thing missing, isn’t there?” She avoided Mari’s eyes, staring at the rock instead.

  Mari shaded her eyes with her hand and looked over the horizon, where the sea met the sky.

  “Yes,” she said, “I wish your father were here as well but he’s very busy right now with his steam engines. He’s going to build an engine that will fight even the worst fires and save many lives.”

  He hadn’t been back to Southend since the fire that claimed his house, and nearly claimed his life.

  The painful memory had kept him away for so many years. She couldn’t help thinking that if he had come with them it might have helped bury the dark memories for good.

  “You smile more when Father is near,” said Adele, throwing the rock toward the sea.

  “Do I?” Mari replied, flustered.

  Adele nodded. “What’s Father’s real name?”

  “Edgar,” Mari said, her voice catching.

  Adele hopped up and grabbed a sharp stick of driftwood.

  “E-D-G-A-R . . .” she wrote with the stick, etching his name into the damp sand.

  She surveyed her handiwork. “Edgar,” she spoke. “Yes, it sounds like him. Hard around the edges but with a promising ahhh in the middle.”

  Adele was definitely going to be a poetess.

  “What’s your first name?” Adele asked Mari.

  “Mari. Like Mary, but with an i.”

  Adele spelled out Mari in the sand next to Edgar.

  Michel approached and took the stick from Adele. He gave Mari a devilish grin and drew a heart around both of their names.

  “Why did you do that?” Mari asked.

  “Because you belong together,” shouted Michel, already running away.

  Adele chased after him and they both disappeared behind a jagged outcropping of rocks.

  Edgar and Mari, written in crooked, childish script and bordered by a lopsided heart.

  Mari rose, intending to sweep the names away, but something stopped her. The words danced in her vision and a sharp-edged thought scratched at her mind.

  If Edgar was learning to care for his children . . . could he learn to care for her?

  Because she didn’t just love these intelligent, inquisitive children. She cared for their father as well.

  She reached down and lifted a conch shell to her ear. She had a secret to whisper into the shell’s dark interior. “I’m falling in love with Edgar,” she announced.

  She lifted the shell to her ear. No answer except the roaring of her own blood pounding in her ears.

  “I know it’s a thoroughly impractical thing to do,” she told the shell. “I know it will end badly and I’ll be hurt. But do I really even have a choice?”

  Of course the lonely governess tumbled madly in love with the handsome duke. It happened all the time in the novels she read.

  It was happening to her right now.

  She was plunging headlong and heedless, like Michel and Adele rolling down sand dunes.

  She didn’t know where her fall would end. Where did she want it to end? Somewhere with Edgar’s arms around her, warm as sunshine. The twins’ carefree laughter in her ears.

  We belong together.

  Surely she was permitted to dream a little on a sunny day at the seashore.

  The twins raced back into view, leaping over tide pools on their way back toward her. They’d found something to show her. She readied a specimen container.

  She had quite a collection of shells and dried, withered things.

  They swooped down on her like seagulls on a limpet, capturing her hands.

  “Come and see what we’ve found!” cried Adele.

  “Another sea urchin?” asked Mari.

  “It’s over there,” Michel said, tugging on her arm and drawing her across the sand.

  “A sea star?” she asked.

  “More like a sea monster,” said Adele.

  They laughed merrily, pulling her along.

  They rounded the bend and Mari lurched to a halt.

  Her eyes must be playing tricks on her, because she thought she saw a devilish duke, rising from the sand like some mythical monster, dark and commanding against the sun.

  Until a smile touched his lips and lit his eyes, like sunshine sparkling over the gray sea.

  And then, he was merely Edgar.

  And she merely loved him. With all of her newly widened heart. She didn’t know what that meant in the grand scheme of things.

  She only knew it was true.

  Chapter 26

  Edgar closed the gap between them, his gait uneven on the shifting sand. All he could see was Mari’s sparkling blue eyes and wide smile.

  His heart lifted and flew into the sky like a seabird.

  She wore a loosely flowing gown of lavender muslin with a soft gray shawl wrapped around her shoulders and her bonnet dangled down her back.

  “You’re being kissed by the sun.” He touched Adele’s no
se, his eyes still on Mari’s face.

  Mari lifted a hand to her cheek. “More freckles.”

  “I like your freckles,” he said.

  “Why are you here?” Mari asked. “I thought you were testing your new engine.”

  “We tested it. It exploded.”

  Her face paled beneath her golden freckles. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Was there a loud boom?” asked Michel.

  “Very loud,” said Edgar, “but no one was hurt. My engineer thought I needed a holiday, so I jumped in a carriage, stayed overnight at the inn in Wickford, and here I am.” He grinned at the children. “Are you having fun?”

  Adele bounced on her heels. “We’re glad you came, Father. We have so much to show you. Just today we’ve already found sea urchins, and sea stars and semi-precious stones—”

  “And we built sand castles and rolled in the sand and Miss Perkins said we could eat oysters tonight,” said Michel in a rush.

  “They have sand in their ears, I’m afraid,” said Mari.

  “We have sand everywhere,” answered Michel proudly, shaking one of his legs and watching the sand pour out of the leg of his trousers.

  Edgar laughed to see them so happy and excited. He mussed Michel’s hair. “I brought you something.”

  “What is it?” asked Michel.

  Edgar walked back to the rock outcropping and retrieved the kite he’d brought. “This is the same kind of kite that I used to fly here, on this very beach, when I was your age.” He held up the green kite he’d purchased from Lumley’s on his way out of London.

  “It’s a beauty,” said Michel, touching the green silk stretched across the lightweight wood frame.

  “What shape is a kite, children?” asked Mari.

  Adele frowned. “It’s not a diamond. Which means it’s not a rhombus.”

  “Very good,” said Edgar, impressed.

  “It looks like the same shape as the scales on Trix’s back,” observed Michel.

  “Quite right.” Mari nodded. “It’s a quadrilateral but the equal-length sides are adjacent. When we return to London we’ll take the kite’s measurements.”