Primrose and the Dreadful Duke_Garland Cousins 1

by Emily Larkin

  Primrose looked down at her plate, too, and blinked in astonishment. Had she really chosen three sausages and kedgeree and eggs? What had she been thinking?

  She ate slowly, hoping the Cheevers would leave and she could speak to Dasenby alone. She was just finishing the kedgeree when the door to the breakfast parlor opened. She looked up eagerly.

  It was a footman, bringing a fresh pot of tea.

  Primrose ate even more slowly, while both Lord and Lady Cheevers refilled their teacups. Lady Cheevers’s turban was in the Moorish style this morning.

  Primrose had eaten both eggs and was embarking on her first sausage when the door opened again. This time, it was her brother, with Oliver behind him.

  She laid down her knife and fork. “Good morning,” she said. “How are you?” But she could see for herself. Both men were clear-eyed and alert, looking as fit and healthy as she’d ever seen them.

  “In excellent form, thank you,” Oliver said. “Slept like a baby.” He gave her a wink and turned to the sideboard and the array of dishes.

  Primrose pushed aside her plate thankfully. Sausages were all very well at breakfast, but not three of them, and not after she’d eaten eggs and kedgeree. She reached for her teacup while Rhodes and Oliver piled their plates high and took places opposite her and Dasenby.

  Primrose was pleased to observe that both men had healthy appetites. The laudanum had clearly done them no harm. She sipped her tea while they ate, and directed her thoughts at the Cheevers. Leave. Leave. It didn’t work. The Cheevers sipped their tea, too, showing no inclination to depart the sunny parlor.

  The butler entered the room, his expression grave. He crossed to Lord Cheevers and bent to whisper in the viscount’s ear.

  Cheevers’s face paled. He put down his teacup, almost missing the saucer, causing a loud clatter.

  Primrose tensed. Something was wrong.

  Lady Cheevers sensed it, too. “Frederick?” she said, a note of apprehension in her voice. “What is it?”

  Cheevers opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He seemed speechless with shock. He didn’t look at his wife; he looked at Dasenby.

  Primrose realized with alarm that the butler was looking at Dasenby, too.

  “What is it?” Lady Cheevers said, more sharply.

  Lord Cheevers swallowed, and then said, in a hoarse voice, “The gardeners have found someone drowned in the lake.”

  Lady Cheevers gasped, and placed her hand at her throat.

  Oh, God, Primrose thought. It must be—

  “It’s Algernon,” Cheevers said.

  The color drained abruptly from Dasenby’s face. He put his teacup down with a clatter similar to the one Lord Cheevers had made.

  Cheevers’s face creased with distress and sympathy. “My dear boy, I’m so sorry.”

  Oliver put down his knife and fork hastily, pushed back his chair, and came around the table. He gripped Dasenby’s shoulders and spoke to Cheevers. “Where’s the body?”

  Cheevers shook his head and glanced at the butler.

  “On the jetty, Your Grace,” the butler said.

  Primrose saw Oliver’s fingers flex comfortingly on Dasenby’s shoulders. “Come on, Nin,” he said quietly. “Let’s go see him.”

  Dasenby stood. So did Lord Cheevers.

  Oliver took Dasenby by the arm, and steered him towards the door. No one spoke as the four men filed from the room: Cheevers, the butler, Dasenby, Oliver. Oliver looked back at the last moment—a flicker of a glance at her, a flicker of a glance at Rhodes, and then he was gone.

  The door closed.

  Primrose realized that she was frozen in the same position she’d been in when the butler had entered: teacup half raised to her mouth. She put it down in its saucer, quietly, and met Rhodes’s eyes across the table.

  “Oh, dear,” Lady Cheevers said, fumbling for her handkerchief. “How terrible this is!”

  Yes, it was terrible, but it was also . . .

  Fitting. Just.

  The murderer was dead.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Oliver had seen more than his fair share of corpses. Uncle Algernon was one of the easier ones to look at; his body wasn’t mutilated, his face wasn’t twisted into a rictus of agony or despair. He looked sodden and bedraggled, but peaceful.

  Lord Cheevers probably hadn’t seen many corpses. He turned his face away, as if the sight was too much for him.

  Ninian didn’t look away.

  Oliver gazed down at the body, remembering Uncle Algy’s laugh, remembering how he’d slipped him guineas all those years ago—remembering that he’d tried to kill him last night.

  Uncle Algy looked smaller dead than he had alive. He also looked vacant, his big personality extinguished. The only clue to the man he’d been was the deep laughter lines around his eyes.

  Oliver released his breath in a slow sigh. “I’m so sorry, Nin.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Ninian said, tears in his voice.

  Those four words were acknowledgment of something they both knew and Lord Cheevers didn’t: Uncle Algy hadn’t drowned by accident. He had chosen this—the lake—in preference to the alternative.

  Oliver stared somberly down at the body. If Uncle Algy had known that banishment was to be his fate, not the gallows, would he still have chosen to drown himself?

  There was no way of knowing now.

  He sighed again, and put his arm around Ninian’s shoulders and hugged him. “Come on, Nin. We need to talk. Lord Cheevers will take care of everything here, won’t you, my lord?”

  “Yes,” Cheevers said, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief.

  * * *

  They walked for several minutes, he and Ninian, the grass damp beneath their boots. Neither of them spoke. At last they came to a little bower overgrown with roses. The wooden bench beneath was dry.

  “Here, Nin,” Oliver said.

  They sat. Ninian put his elbows on his knees and bent his head and stared down at his clasped hands. There was misery in every line of his body, and even though he was sitting next to Oliver, he seemed lonely and forlorn. Oliver felt a surge of protectiveness. He put his arm around Ninian’s shoulders again, and hugged him.

  “How could he do it?” Ninian whispered.

  Oliver didn’t ask Ninian to clarify what he meant by “it.” He imagined that Ninian meant all of it: the attempts at murder, the taking of his own life.

  “We’ll never know,” he said. “But I’m guessing . . . he went down a path that he hadn’t meant to go down, and once he’d started he found that he couldn’t turn back, or even stop, and all he could do was follow the path to its end.” And instead of a dukedom, that end had been death.

  They were both orphaned now, he and Ninian.

  Oliver tilted his head to the side, until his temple touched Ninian’s. “You’re not alone,” he told him. “I’ve got your back.”

  “I know,” Ninian said, in a wobbly voice.

  Oliver tightened his arm around Ninian’s shoulders. “We’re not the last of the Dasenbys, Nin; we’re the beginning of them again. It starts with us. You and me.”

  Ninian inhaled a shaky breath. He gave a little nod.

  “I know that on paper we’re only cousins, but . . . in my eyes we’re brothers.”

  There was a moment’s silence, and then, “Brothers?”

  “Yes,” Oliver said firmly. “You’re my brother and I’m yours. If that’s all right with you?”

  Ninian gave an unsteady laugh, and blotted his eyes with his cuff. “It is.”

  * * *

  They sat in the rose-covered bower for half an hour, and then Oliver took Ninian back to the house. Lady Cheevers embraced Ninian and fussed over him like a mother hen with a chick, and Miss Cheevers sat alongside him on the sofa and clasped his hand when she thought no one was looking. Lady Cheevers rang for a pot of tea. Oliver declined a cup; instead, he went looking for Primrose and Rhodes. He found them in the library. “We need to talk.”

&
nbsp; “We do, rather,” Rhodes said. “Come upstairs, where we won’t be interrupted.”

  They held their conference in Rhodes’s old bedchamber. Primrose took the armchair, Oliver rested his hips against the windowsill, and Rhodes leaned against one of the carved bedposts. They both listened intently while Primrose related the events of the previous night. “He held a cloth over my mouth and nose?” Oliver repeated, when she reached that point in her narrative. “And I didn’t wake up?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Good God,” he said. “That’s . . .” Disturbing, was what it was. “Thank you, Prim. If you hadn’t been there . . .”

  “You should thank your cousin. I was only there because of him. He was worried about you; I wasn’t. I thought the pair of you were safe together.”

  Oliver exchanged a glance with Rhodes. “So did we.”

  “Keep going, Prim,” Rhodes said. “Did Lord Algernon say anything to you?”

  “No.”

  Oliver listened with his mouth open as Primrose described how she’d given chase.

  “He threw you off the terrace? Down all those steps? ” Rhodes’s voice slid up half an octave.

  “I translocated,” Primrose said.

  “Yes, but . . .” Rhodes seemed almost incapable of speech. Oliver knew exactly how that felt, because he was almost incapable of speech right now, too.

  A shiver originated deep in his chest. Primrose had almost died.

  “But . . . but if you hadn’t been able to translocate . . .” Rhodes said. “If you hadn’t . . .”

  “But I can translocate,” Primrose said, matter-of-factly. Then her brow creased. “However, I think it would be best if we don’t mention that part to Mother and Father.”

  “Agreed,” Rhodes said.

  “Were you hurt?” Oliver asked.

  “The merest bruise. That’s all.” Her tone dismissed it as unimportant. She changed the subject: “I suggest we leave after the funeral. Go to Gloucestershire. Do you agree?”

  Oliver didn’t respond to this question. His attention was still fixed on Primrose and Uncle Algy and the terrace.

  Rhodes’s attention must have been fixed on it, too, because he said, “Bruise?”

  The door opened. Benoît stepped into the room. He halted when he saw them. “I beg your pardon,” he said, with an apologetic bow, and began to retreat.

  Oliver held up his hand. “Please wait a moment, Benoît. Close the door.”

  The valet did. “What is it, Your Grace?”

  “If the opportunity arises . . . if you should happen to speak with my uncle’s valet, I would like to have a better understanding of my uncle’s last hours.”

  “I have already taken the liberty of doing that,” Benoît said. “Lord Algernon’s man waited up until one in the morning, but his lordship never came. The bed wasn’t slept in. It appears that his lordship didn’t return to his room at all. The footmen are saying that he died wearing the same clothes he wore to dinner.”

  Oliver frowned, and tried to remember what Uncle Algy had worn last night, and what his corpse had been wearing on the jetty this morning. He realized the footmen were correct: they were the same clothes.

  “He can’t have returned to the house after I confronted him,” Primrose said.

  “Probably thought you’d raise a hue and cry,” Rhodes said, rubbing his eyes.

  “Was that all, Your Grace?”

  “Yes,” Oliver said. “Thank you.” When the valet had gone, he said to Rhodes, “That man of yours is dashed clever. If you ever let him go, I’ll take—”

  “He’s mine,” Rhodes said, rubbing his eyes again. “No poaching.”

  “Wasn’t going to poach,” Oliver said indignantly. “I said if—”

  “We need to leave this room,” Primrose said, rising from the chair. “Now.”

  Oliver blinked. “We do?”

  “That’s the second time Rhodes has rubbed his eyes, and Lord Algernon did put bishop’s weed in the bedhangings.” She pointed to the door. “Out. Now.”

  “Dash it,” Rhodes said, pushing away from the bedpost. “I forgot. Thanks, Prim.”

  They went outside and strolled in the gardens for a while, not saying much, and then Rhodes turned back to the house. “I want to write to the children. Let them know I’ll be in Gloucestershire soon.”

  Oliver watched him out of sight, then turned to Primrose. “Told you I’d get Rhodes to Gloucestershire.”

  Primrose didn’t try to puncture his smugness. All she said was, “So you did.”

  Oliver thought back over the past five days, and then shook his head and gave a wry laugh. “Poor Lord and Lady Cheevers. What a disaster this house party has been. A broken wrist, a broken nose, and a death. I doubt they’ll ever host another one again.”

  “Oh, I think that if you offered for Miss Cheevers they would consider this house party extremely successful.”

  “Very funny,” Oliver said. He took her hand, tucked it into the crook of his arm, and headed for the house.

  “Where are we going?”

  “The State apartments.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  They met no one on their way to the State rooms. Oliver opened the door and Primrose slipped inside. She knew why Oliver had suggested coming here: he wanted to kiss her again.

  She didn’t object to kissing him, in fact, she rather wanted to, but what she most wanted to do was talk. Not about Lord Algernon or Ninian Dasenby, not about Rhodes or his children. She wanted to talk about herself and Oliver. Specifically, she wanted to know what this—kisses stolen in the State apartments—meant to him.

  The second rule is to look things in the face and know them for what they are. Well, she had looked this in the face last night, when she’d thought Oliver was dying, and she knew it for what it was.

  She was in love with him.

  How had that happened? How had the person who had annoyed her throughout her entire childhood suddenly become so important to her as an adult?

  Or perhaps it hadn’t been sudden? Perhaps the seeds had been sown years ago and been lying dormant all this time?

  The how and why of it were irrelevant. What mattered was that it had happened—and she needed to do something about it. Specifically, she needed to tell Oliver how she felt and ask whether he returned her feelings.

  If he didn’t love her—if he never could love her—it was better to find that out now.

  Primrose led the way through the State sitting room and the State dressing room, into the State bedchamber with its ridiculous dais and even more ridiculous gilded pillars.

  Oliver didn’t fling himself down on the bed, as he so often had; instead, he crossed to the window and looked out.

  Primrose watched him. Oliver had revealed his true colors this past week. Not a fribble, not a fool, but a man who was decisive, intelligent, compassionate, and fair-minded. Even when things had been at their toughest, he’d still managed to laugh—not the foolish merriment of a man too dull-witted to see danger bearing down on him, but the laughter of a man who saw the danger and decided to laugh anyway, because life was better when he did.

  She liked that in him. She liked it a lot. His laughter brightened her world.

  Oliver turned away from the window. He was backlit by sunshine, his face in shadow, his expression difficult to discern. “Prim,” he said, and then hesitated.

  Primrose hesitated, too, wondering how to broach her subject. It was absurdly daunting, but delaying would only serve to make it more daunting, so she took hold of her courage and inhaled a deep, bracing breath.

  “Prim . . . will you please marry me?”

  Her heart gave an enormous leap—and then plunged back down. This wasn’t the first time Oliver had asked her to marry him. It wasn’t even the second or third time.

  It’s another one of his jokes, she told herself, but hope was flowering in her breast.

  “Why?” Fear of his answer made her voice sharper than she’d meant it to b
e. “To save you from Miss Cheevers?”

  “She wouldn’t have me even if I asked,” Oliver said. “And I wouldn’t ask her because I don’t want to marry her.” He took a step away from the window. She still couldn’t see his expression clearly, backlit as he was, but she could see enough to tell that he was staring at her. “The person I want to marry . . . the person I very much want to marry . . . is you, Prim.”

  The hope began to flower more wildly. Primrose gripped her hands together. “Why?”

  “Why?” Oliver laughed. “Because . . .” His voice trailed off. He stood silently for several seconds, and then said, “Because I love you.”

  Primrose opened her mouth to ask why again, but Oliver beat her to it.

  “I love the way your mind works,” he said. “I love the things you say.” He took a step towards her. “I love that I’m not a duke to you; I’m just Oliver. Because that’s all I am: just Oliver.” He took another step closer. She could see his face clearly now, that intent gaze. “And I love you because you’re beautiful and brave and funny and clever and wise, and you read too many books and have a dashed tart tongue and you kiss like a debauched angel and there’s no one else in England like you.”

  Primrose found herself incapable of speech. She could only stare at him.

  “So, Primrose Garland . . . will you marry me?”

  She nodded, and found enough of her voice to whisper, “Yes.”

  Relief lit Oliver’s face. He gave a laugh, and caught her up in an embrace that was so exuberant that it squeezed all the air from her lungs.

  “Did you doubt it?” she asked, breathlessly.

  “Of course I doubted it.” Oliver set her carefully on her feet. “I have it on good authority that I’m a jingle brains, and not everyone wants to marry a jingle brains, even if he is a duke.”

  He smiled down at her, and then bent his head and kissed her.

  Primrose kissed him back enthusiastically.

  It was several minutes before they drew apart, by which time they were both rather flushed and short of breath. Oliver scooped her up and laid her on the Holland-covered bed, then lay down beside her and gave a beatific sigh. Primrose let her eyes feast on him: the rumpled brown hair, the tanned skin, the woodland-colored eyes, the laughter lines, the smiling mouth.