Primrose and the Dreadful Duke_Garland Cousins 1

by Emily Larkin

  Of course he couldn’t forget it—whatever “it” was. But he could be a gentleman and cede to her request and pretend that whatever had happened hadn’t happened.

  Except that it would drive him mad, not knowing. And more than that, he needed to know, because he’d been kissing Primrose half an hour ago, and if they didn’t talk this out he doubted they’d ever kiss again.

  “I’m very certain,” Oliver said.

  Primrose accepted this with a wry twist of her lips. She knocked on the door. After a moment, Rhodes’s valet opened it.

  “Benoît, I’m sorry, but Westfell and I need to speak to my brother in private.”

  “Of course, Lady Primrose.” The man stepped out into the corridor.

  “If you could give us an hour?”

  “Of course,” he said again.

  Primrose entered the bedchamber. Oliver followed on her heels and closed the door. Rhodes lifted the wet cloth half off, revealing one bloodshot eye. He squinted at them. “What’s up? Is it Ninian? Did he try something?”

  “No.” Primrose clasped her hands together, took a deep breath, and said with the air of someone making a confession, “Oliver saw me translocate.”

  Rhodes seemed to understand this cryptic utterance. He grimaced. “Did he?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.” She bit her lip, and then offered: “It was an accident.”

  “Of course it was an accident.” Rhodes took the cloth off entirely, and placed it in one of the bowls of water on the bedside table. He looked at Oliver. It was difficult to decipher Rhodes’s expression, with his eyelids swollen like that, but Oliver thought that he looked cautious, a little wary. “So . . . what do you think, Ollie?”

  “I don’t think anything because I don’t know anything. What the devil is going on?”

  Rhodes glanced at Primrose. “You haven’t told him?”

  “I thought he’d be more likely to believe you than me.”

  Rhodes snorted. “I doubt it.”

  “Should I fetch Mother?”

  “Will the two of you stop being so cryptic and tell me what the devil is going on!”

  Primrose and Rhodes looked at him, and then at each other. After a moment, Rhodes shrugged. “Primrose has a Faerie godmother.”

  Oliver laughed flatly.

  “I’m serious,” Rhodes said, and his voice did sound serious. “All the women in our family do. Mother, Prim, Vi, Aster. My aunts. My cousins.”

  Oliver laughed again. In fact, it probably couldn’t even be called a laugh—too short, too flat.

  “She grants them one wish each, when they turn twenty-three. Primrose chose translocation, which means that she can move from one place to another like that.” Rhodes snapped his fingers.

  Oliver shook his head. He didn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it.

  “Show him, Prim,” Rhodes said.

  Oliver glanced at her—and as he did so, she vanished, winking out as if she’d never existed.

  “It’s instantaneous,” Primrose said from behind him.

  He managed not to scream or fall over this time. He did give a colossal start, though. He jerked around to face her. Every hair on his body sprang upright.

  “I wanted to be able to travel between both place and time, but Baletongue wouldn’t let me. She said that time isn’t for humans to meddle with. So I chose translocation.”

  Oliver wasn’t sure which of those sentences to address first. It was all so enormous. Too enormous.

  “Baletongue?” he said finally.

  “My Faerie godmother.”

  Oliver uttered that short, flat, disbelieving laugh again. I don’t believe in Faeries, he wanted to say. Or Faerie godmothers. Or wishes or magic. But how could he say that when he’d just witnessed Primrose vanish and then reappear?

  Fuck. He rubbed one hand roughly through his hair. He wasn’t drunk, was he? Did he have a fever? Was he hallucinating? Or was this perhaps a joke? A hugely sophisticated trick?

  He looked at Primrose. Her expression was grave, anxious.

  He turned his head and looked at Rhodes. His expression was grave, too.

  This wasn’t a hallucination.

  It wasn’t a joke or a trick.

  It was real.

  Oliver strode to the window and stared out at the rain-soaked landscape. He crossed his arms. He wasn’t quite sure why he crossed his arms, whether he was angry or defensive or maybe whether it was to anchor himself, because the world had certainly tipped itself upside down.

  Faeries?

  Neither Rhodes nor Primrose said anything. Oliver listened to the rain pelt against the windowpanes. Finally he turned around. He didn’t uncross his arms. “What does she look like, this Faerie?”

  Primrose shivered. “Scary.”

  Oliver lifted his eyebrows. He uncrossed his arms. “Scary?”

  “She has black eyes and sharp teeth like a cat.”

  Oliver leaned back against the windowsill. “How big is she?”

  “About my size.”

  He glanced at Rhodes. “You’ve seen her?”

  Rhodes shook his head. “She doesn’t show herself to us.”

  “Us?”

  “Men.”

  Oliver thought about this for a moment. “So, who else knows about her?”

  “No one outside the family.”

  “Did Evelyn know?”

  Rhodes shook his head. “And my children won’t know, either. Best to keep it a secret.”

  “But your daughter—”

  “Baletongue won’t visit her.”

  Oliver frowned. “But you just said that she visits all the women in your family.”

  “Only those born into an unbroken female line,” Primrose said. “The line continues with me and Vi and Aster, but breaks with Rhodes.”

  Oliver puzzled this through. “So, this . . . this legacy was passed from your grandmother to your mother, to you and Vi and Aster, and it will pass to your daughters if you have any, but not to Rhodes and his daughter?”

  “Correct.”

  “And . . .” He narrowed his eyes. “Both your aunts had wishes. And Lily and Clem and Daph. And their daughters will have them—if they have daughters. But not Carlyle, or any daughters he might have?”

  “Yes.”

  He glanced at Rhodes. “So how does that make you feel?”

  Rhodes shrugged. “I’m going to be a duke. I feel pretty lucky.”

  Oliver laughed. This time it was a real laugh. Then he sobered. “So, if you’re not going to tell your children about it, why did your parents tell you?”

  “Because I’ll be head of the family and it’s safer if I know. For situations exactly like this.” His gesture encompassed both Primrose and Oliver. “And maybe one day I’ll tell my oldest son. It’s a tough decision. Depends a lot on who my sisters marry. If they marry at all.”

  Oliver was reminded of the decision he’d been trying to make when Primrose had suddenly stepped out from behind that screen.

  An enormous decision—which he wasn’t ready to think about now, not while he was still reeling from this revelation.

  He brought his attention firmly back to the matter at hand. Questions swarmed in his mind. He picked one at random.

  “How come your family has a Faerie godmother?”

  “One of our ancestors did something for Baletongue,” Primrose said. “This is our reward.”

  “Reward? What on earth did this ancestor do?”

  “We don’t know,” Rhodes said. “It was centuries ago. But whatever it was, it must have been big.”

  Big? It had to have been colossal.

  “Do other families have Faerie godmothers?” Did half of the population of England have one, and he just didn’t know?

  Primrose shook her head. “We’ve always been told it’s only us.”

  “So . . . what did Vi and Aster wish for? And your mother? Or is that a secret?”

  “Mother can translocate, like me, and—”

  An urgent knock
sounded on the door.

  Primrose closed her mouth. She crossed to the door and opened it. Rhodes’s valet, Benoît, stood there, even though it hadn’t been anywhere near an hour since he’d left. “Miss Warrington has had an accident on the stairs,” he said.

  “God damn it,” Oliver said, pushing away from the windowsill. “Is she hurt?”

  “It is possible that her nose is broken, Your Grace. The doctor has been sent for.”

  “Did anyone see it happen?”

  “No, sir. She was alone.”

  “Which stairs?” Primrose asked. “Do you know, Benoît?”

  “The same stairs that Miss Carteris fell down.” The valet paused, and then gave an expressive Gallic shrug. “The housemaids are saying there is a ghost.”

  “No ghost,” Oliver said grimly. “Just a goddamned harpy. Come on, Prim. Let’s take a look.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  They walked briskly, along a corridor, across an echoing gallery, and then into a smaller one. The four steps up to the South Wing came into sight. A housemaid was on hands and knees at the bottom, scrubbing the carpet.

  “Is this where Miss Warrington fell?” Oliver asked, when he and Primrose reached the girl.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Was there some blood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Quite a bit of blood, Oliver guessed, looking at the size of the wet patch on the carpet. He hoped that Miss Warrington’s nose was merely bruised, not broken.

  The maid wiped her hands on her apron, her task finished. She picked up the pail and scrubbing brush and departed up the short flight of stairs, disappearing around the corner.

  Oliver and Primrose waited until the sound of her footsteps had faded, then climbed the four steps themselves. The corridor stretched to the left and to the right, empty.

  He really shouldn’t be up here, with or without Primrose, but right now Oliver didn’t care about propriety. He examined the alcove, but no telltale pieces of string lay abandoned there. Primrose was checking the newel post. She crouched and pointed. “Oliver, look.”

  Oliver looked, and saw nothing. He stepped closer.

  Primrose was pointing to that exceedingly convenient groove at ankle height. It looked exactly the same as it had earlier. No, wait . . . was that a scrap of string tied around it?

  His gaze leapt to hers.

  “You see it?” Primrose said.

  “I see it.” Oliver turned his head, hearing voices approach from the long gallery.

  “Oh, how perfectly dreadful!” He recognized that voice: it was Miss Middleton-Murray.

  Primrose stood and grabbed his arm and pulled him down the corridor. They tiptoed hastily, almost running. Primrose opened a door, and shoved him into her bedroom—

  Oliver halted and looked around.

  This wasn’t Primrose’s bedroom. It wasn’t anyone’s bedroom. It was a servants’ stairwell.

  Primrose closed the door quietly. They stood on the small landing, listening intently, their heads tilted towards the door. Oliver heard nothing.

  “We have proof now!” Primrose said, in an excited whisper. “We can tell the Cheevers!”

  Oliver shook his head. “It’s not enough proof,” he whispered back. “Anyone could have tied that string. One of the servants, even.”

  “What? Of course a servant didn’t do it!”

  “I know, but we can’t prove it, Prim.”

  “But—”

  “The string doesn’t tell us who set the trap, only that it was done.”

  Her brow wrinkled. “So . . . we shouldn’t tell anyone?”

  “I don’t know.” Oliver rubbed his forehead. “We need to think. But not here.” He turned towards the stairs leading down. “Let’s go.”

  “You go. I’ll meet you in the State apartments in ten minutes.”

  Oliver nodded, took a step, and then halted and looked back at her. “Are you going to . . . you know?” He snapped his fingers like Rhodes had done.

  Primrose hesitated. “Perhaps.”

  “Can you wait until I’m down there before you do it? I want to see it.”

  She shook her head. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Dangerous? How?”

  “Think what would happen if I translocated to the exact same spot where you were standing.”

  Oliver did think about this for a moment. It made him shiver.

  “That’s why I used the screen, because I knew no one would be behind it. But you almost were.”

  Oliver shook his head. “No, I wasn’t.”

  “You were two feet from it!”

  “And I’ll stay two feet from it. I promise, Prim. I’d like to see it properly this time, that’s all.”

  Primrose took her lower lip between her teeth. He could see her indecision.

  “Please, Prim.”

  She released her lip. “All right. But don’t stand behind the screen, Oliver.”

  “I won’t. Word of honor.”

  * * *

  Oliver was slightly out of breath by the time he reached the State apartments. He strode through the reception room, through the sitting room, and into the dressing room. They were the dreariest set of rooms he’d ever seen, the thin daylight barely penetrating the gloom, the dark red damask on the walls looking almost black, the shrouded furniture hovering eerily in the shadows.

  Sepulchral. That was the word for these rooms: sepulchral.

  He trod cautiously over to the red-and-black lacquered screen. “Prim?”

  No one answered.

  Oliver took two steps sideways, until his shoulder brushed the silk-covered wall and he had a perfect view of the space behind the screen.

  He leaned against the wall, and waited. His heart was beating a little fast—and it wasn’t entirely due to how hastily he’d come down the servants’ stairs. An emotion prickled faintly across his skin. He wasn’t quite certain what it was. Fear? Anticipation?

  Don’t scream this time, he told himself. And do not fall over. Because there really was no way for a man to recover his pride after he’d screamed and—

  Primrose appeared behind the screen.

  Even though he was expecting it, Oliver recoiled so hard that his head hit the wall. A sound came from his throat. A squeak this time, not a scream, but squeaks were almost as bad as screams.

  And so, because it was simply impossible to recover one’s manliness after screaming or squeaking, Oliver decided to play up to the moment like an actor in a bad melodrama. He clapped both his hands to his chest as if his heart had given out, staggered back a few paces, and collapsed to the floor with his arms outflung and his eyes closed.

  After a moment, he heard quiet footsteps.

  He opened his eyes.

  Primrose stood looking down at him, her hands on her hips. “You really are an idiot, Daisy.” Her face was in shadow, her features indistinguishable in the gloom, but he could hear that she was trying not to laugh.

  “All the best dukes are,” Oliver said, not lifting his head from the floor.

  She might have rolled her eyes; it was a little too dark to know for certain. She sat down next to him, cross-legged like a Turk. “What are we going to do?”

  Oliver reached for her hand and laced his fingers through hers. “About Miss Middleton-Murray?”

  “Yes.”

  Oliver sighed, and pushed up to sit. “I don’t know.”

  “We can’t let her get away with it.”

  “No.” Oliver scooted back on the carpet until his back was against the wall. He pulled Primrose towards him and tucked her close, one arm around her shoulders.

  She leaned into him. “She probably won’t do it again, you realize. She has no rivals here now.”

  “Doesn’t she?” Oliver said, dipping his head to place a kiss on her soft hair. “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “You may not think I’m an ape leader, Oliver, but Miss Middleton-Murray does. She classes me with the spinsters and chaperones and old ladies.” />
  “How very foolish of her,” he said, kissing her hair again. It had the same scent as her skin: orange blossom.

  “And as for Miss Cheevers, she’s no rival either, because she’s in love with your cousin.”

  Oliver lifted his head. “What?”

  “Miss Cheevers is in love with Mr. Dasenby.”

  “The devil she is!”

  Primrose gave an exasperated huff of breath. “How have you not noticed? She doesn’t flirt with you at all.”

  “She’s just a little shy.”

  “Very shy,” Primrose said. “And head over heels in love with your cousin. And if you haven’t noticed that, Miss Middleton-Murray has. Trust me.”

  “Miss Cheevers prefers that namby-pamby to me?” Oliver said, a little piqued.

  “She does. Which is a good thing, because we don’t have to worry about Miss Middleton-Murray setting traps for her.”

  Oliver grunted, no longer listening with his full attention. He was thinking about Ninian. Ninian dropping the snuff box yesterday. Ninian knocking over the Madeira today.

  He remembered the hand that had shoved him between his shoulder blades.

  “But even if we can’t catch Miss Middleton-Murray, we should be able to catch your cousin,” Primrose said, as if her thoughts had followed the same path his had. “Just as soon as this rain stops.”

  “Yes,” Oliver said, and even though it was only one word, his voice sounded harsh.

  “Have you decided what you’ll do with him?” Primrose asked, after a moment. “Will you prosecute him? Ship him to the colonies? Or merely warn him off?”

  Oliver sighed. “I don’t know. If he did kill Uncle Reginald or Percival—or both of them—then he deserves to hang. If he didn’t . . . The colonies, I guess.” He closed his eyes. “God, how am I going to tell Uncle Algy that Ninian tried to murder me?”

  “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,” Primrose said. “One step at a time, Oliver—and the first step is catching him in the act.”

  “Yes.” He sighed again, and opened his eyes. He wasn’t used to feeling melancholy, but right now that’s exactly how he felt: melancholy.

  The rain probably had something to do with it. And the gloom of the dressing room. And Rhodes’s illness. Throw in Miss Middleton-Murray and Ninian, and it was no wonder his spirits were low.