The Dukes of Vauxhall

by Vanessa Kelly, Christi Caldwell, Theresa Romain, Shana Galen

  “How I’ve treated you?” Nithsdale was all indignation, picking up his hat and punching it back into shape. “All I wanted to do just now was talk to you, and you ran away. Very rude of you.”

  “Oh, you want to talk? Fine. Talk. I’ll give you two minutes.” She gave a little kick with her slippered foot, sending dust into his face.

  “Why…” He settled his hat on his head again. “It’s not so much that I have something particular to say. Just that I wanted to speak to you. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you.”

  “Not long enough.”

  “But well done you, getting engaged to the Duke of Westfair.” He winked, his cherub face all smudged with dirt. “Does His Grace know you were mine first?”

  “His Grace,” she snapped, “knows that I am a person worthy of respect. And I know that too. And I was never yours. I belong to myself.”

  With each word, she felt taller and stronger. The rubbery weakness had left her legs; her heart thudded with steady certainty.

  “What a shame,” she added, “that you didn’t treat me as I deserved. As anyone deserves. Perhaps a night alone with your thoughts will help you understand how you wronged me.”

  She turned on her heel and walked away from the pit, ignoring the pleas and curses that issued forth from the marquess. Back she went toward the part of the gardens where the lamps were better lit, where one could hear the orchestra and see people celebrating. Back where she had real shoes, if no one had stolen her case, and a cloak to wrap about herself.

  Every stone she stepped upon hurt. And she still wished she were in France and that she’d never had to see the Marquess of Nithsdale again.

  But while they were both in London, at least she had put him in his place.

  * * *

  Morning had become afternoon by the time Poppy awoke in her rented room, footsore and still tired after troubled dreams that had not claimed her until dawn.

  But she had much to do today. Another performance tonight, at the grand ball marking the end of the Prince Regent’s celebrations at Vauxhall. And before then, she needed to warn Leo. Since she had used his name to help shield her from Nithsdale, it was entirely possible word would get about in Society.

  For a fake engagement of imminent expiration, this was not good.

  She dressed in a dark green gown she thought rather pretty, cut square across the bodice, and with little sleeves trimmed in embroidered flowers. Had she a lady’s maid, she might have looked like the gentleman’s daughter she was. Had been.

  Fortified with tea and toast to settle her rebellious stomach, she donned a bonnet and her dependable old cloak, then wound her careful way through the warm London streets to the Westfair town house. As she plied the door-knocker, she tested phrases in her head.

  Before I tell you what I said to Nithsdale, I want to promise you I didn’t mean it.

  Have you ever seen someone tossed into a pit? No? It’s worth a look. Here’s how I know…

  Before she could settle on the proper approach, the butler opened the door to her, revealing an entrance hall stacked with trunks and valises. Some were more battered than others, but all had been used on a journey. Their leather was marked with seawater splashes like tearstains.

  Her fingers shook as she undid the ribbons of her bonnet. “Is someone planning a journey? Surely not His Grace, after being in London only a week and a half.”

  She spoke with a laugh in her voice. For the suggestion ought to be ridiculous, ought it not?

  The butler looked at her with what she could interpret only as pity, and a cold, worried feeling grew like a weight in her belly. “His Grace is leaving?”

  No. He could not be leaving again. Where would his sense of duty drive him this time, and for how long?

  No, he couldn’t go. She needed him in London, familiar as a childhood home. She was the one who was supposed to leave.

  Before the butler could reply, Leo thundered down the stairs. “Melchett, have we any more—oh, Poppy! Good afternoon. I didn’t realize you’d called.”

  The butler drew up his thin frame and intoned, “I was about to show Miss Hayworth to the study, Your Grace.”

  “Good, good. Fine.” Leo rubbed at his chin, which bore a golden shadow of stubble. “I need paper for wrapping a few fragile items in the second bedchamber.”

  “This morning’s newspaper ought to serve the purpose,” replied the butler. “If you have read all you wish to.”

  “Indeed I have. It was most informative. See the packing done, will you, Melchett?” Leo looked slantwise at Poppy, then tugged the bonnet from her nerveless fingers and tossed it atop a trunk. With a tug at her cloak strings, he removed that garment and sent it flying after the bonnet. “Come along, Poppy. We can talk in the study. There aren’t any trunks there, which is more than I can say for the parlor.”

  She agreed, struggling to pull her thoughts into order. Catch up, Poppy. Something’s going on here. Then she followed him to the study, mind racing, footsteps slow.

  As soon as the door closed behind them, she whirled on Leo. “You’re leaving London? How could you? What about Westfair?”

  “Would you like to pull the furniture into a line and climb all over it while we talk?”

  “Of course not!” To soften her words, she added, “I only do that in the parlor.”

  The study was a small, cramped room, overfull of books and furniture and darkened by heavy draperies. As Leo stood behind the desk, drumming his fingers on its old wooden surface, he looked different to her. Less like Leo Billingsley, more like the Duke of Westfair. He was tired, the humor in his eyes dimmed. His usual whimsically tied cravat was simply knotted and heavily starched, holding his chin at a lofty angle.

  Then he took up a handful of trinkets from the dish on his desk, sifted through them, and chose a little stone ball. Rolling it between his palms, the hard line of his shoulders relaxed. “Do you want tea?”

  “No, thank you.” The idea of food or drink turned her stomach. “Why are you planning to travel again? And so soon? I thought you’d be settled here for a long while.”

  “I don’t have to be in London to take care of Westfair. Which is, as I have become aware, my primary purpose in life.” He tossed the stone into the air, then caught it behind his back.

  “You don’t have to not be in London.”

  Another toss. “Why, Poppy, I didn’t know you cared.”

  “Of course I care, you idiot.”

  This was not, perhaps, the best way to introduce her intended topic. As it turned out, though, Leo did it for her.

  “This morning’s scandal papers were most illuminating. Seems the Marquess of N took a tumble into a pit at Vauxhall that no one can explain the existence of. And the newly returned Duke of W is said to be betrothed to Madame H, a performer on the high wire.”

  She’d expected as much. Nithsdale wouldn’t have seen the need to hold his tongue. “I don’t know why the papers bother using initials. It’s not as though they’re truly keeping a secret.”

  “Ah, but I thought our engagement was a secret. A fabrication? What word ought I to put to it?”

  “I don’t know. You made it up, you think of the word.”

  He dropped the large marble he was tossing. It fell to his desk with a crack, then rolled loudly across the wooden surface and hid somewhere on the cluttered floor.

  “Not again,” he muttered. “It took me too long and a bump on the head to find it last time.”

  “It’s here.” Poppy retrieved it from its nook at the base of a stack of books. It looked like a little world, with swirls of every shade of green. “Pretty.”

  “It’s jade.”

  “It’s a distraction.” She pressed it into his hand. “Are you angry?”

  “No. Not angry. Annoyed, maybe. I’ve missed you, and you’ve only come by to fuss at me.”

  I’ve missed you too. “Not only to fuss at you. I found your marble, too.”

  He smiled, but only for an instant,
then asked cautiously, “It was Nithsdale, wasn’t it? Who…abused you?”

  Telling him the whole truth felt like sharing a burden. “It was. I’m sorry about the second bit from the scandal papers, our engagement being known. I might have thrown it at Nithsdale a bit.”

  “You might have thrown Nithsdale as well, as far as I am concerned. Well done, you.”

  She sank into the chair in front of his desk. “That’s what he said about me catching you in a betrothal. He—came to Vauxhall last night and said he wanted to talk.”

  Leo sat across the desk from her, hands still for once, as she told him everything that had passed. From Edith’s gossip to nearly falling off the wire to the marquess waiting for her at its end. And the run, and the tent, and the pit, and how she would have said anything to Nithsdale to feel as if she weren’t alone with him in the dark.

  Leo’s mobile features had looked angry, horrified, sorrowing as she spoke. Now his expression softened. “I’m glad you said it, then. If it helped you.”

  He picked up a little carving of an elephant, then put it down. Fumbled through the marbles and old coins and pretty trinkets in a china dish. “Our fake engagement was always supposed to help you at least as much as me. Which reminds me, in what form would you like your thousand pounds? Do you like coins, or a bank draft? Some of both?”

  Ah, yes. The money. The initial reason for her agreement to this scheme. But now that Leo had entered her life again, she would never be contented to have him gone from it, and money for a cottage in France and an annuity would be cold comfort.

  She’d always been attached to the fantasy of their engagement. Faced with Lord Nithsdale, she realized just how much Leo’s support, name, devotion, love would mean to her.

  She had to control herself. Yet the need for control came from fear, and she was afraid of what would happen next. After all that had changed, for good or ill, she could not bear for anything else to alter.

  “I should not want you to go to any trouble,” she replied slowly. She probably should have told him she didn’t want the money, couldn’t take it after all. But after encountering Nithsdale so unexpectedly, she needed every penny to escape.

  Before she could say more, Uncle Bernard creaked into the study. “Poppy! Good to see you. We haven’t heard much from you lately.” An accusing glare at Leo. “You ought to consider yourself one of the family already.”

  She’d hoped this moment would not have to come, but here it was. “Ubie, it’s not true. It never was. We aren’t truly engaged to be married.”

  “Not anymore,” Leo chimed in. “She has jilted me. It was most cruel. My heart is in pieces.”

  “No, Leo.” She tried to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t meet hers. He was looking over her line of sight, his usual mien covered with a lacquer of cool flippancy. “The truth does you more credit than a falsehood.”

  Uncle Bernard was looking from one of them to the other, then back. He blinked and blinked, his mouth opened and closed—and then he wavered on his feet.

  Leo shoved back his chair, reaching, but Poppy was nearer. She sprang from her chair and caught Ubie about the shoulders. He was hardly taller than her anymore, so stooped had he become. As she settled him into the chair she had just vacated, he looked up at her with a mixture of confusion and anger that wrung her to the heart.

  “But Leo said—”

  “We both said,” Poppy corrected. “Leo and I. We both agreed to the pretense.” There was no better way through than bluntness, so she blurted, “Leo is a duke now, and he must marry well. And I am carrying another man’s child.”

  As soon as she finished speaking, she turned away from the desk. From the room. She picked her way over clutter, the few steps to the window, and looked out between dark brown velvet draperies. The study was at the front of the house, and she could see the street below. It was busy with people and carriages and carts and horses and even a dog. None of them knew what was going on in the room where a woman stood framed by heavy dark curtains. None of them knew how she felt.

  When she managed to put a smile on her face, she turned around again. Ubie was staring at her. “You are joking. You are joking?” A corner of his mouth pulled up, as though he were trying to smile. “This is all a trick.”

  Leo paced behind the desk, quick choppy strides that skirted the stacks of his brother’s old books. Poppy looked to him, and he made a gesture that unmistakably said, This is your choice; lead on.

  So she turned toward Ubie and, in the strongest voice she could muster, said, “It’s not a trick. It’s true—all true except the fact that Leo and I honestly planned to wed. But that falsehood was because Leo wanted so badly to help us both. Not himself and me. You and me.”

  The old man’s voice sounded frail. “Both of you were lying to me?”

  “If you want to center yourself, then yes.” Leo flicked the edge of a painting, knocking it askew, then set it straight again. “Poppy’s troubles, and my responsibilities, are all really about you.”

  “Don’t be impertinent,” snapped Ubie in his usual tone.

  “Don’t be selfish,” Leo replied smoothly.

  Poppy realized she was gaping at the two of them. She had to seize control of the conversation again. “So you see,” she broke in, “given my condition, it is impossible that I could truly marry Leo. He knew this, and as a friend, he agreed to help me.”

  “It was nothing of the sort,” Leo said. “It was a transaction. I only offered you money when you agreed to pretend an engagement.”

  He was hardening his heart, and she could not blame him. “Not quite how I remember it,” she replied, “but I don’t suppose the exact timeline matters right now.”

  “Of course it matters!” Ubie croaked. “Who is this other man? Why won’t he wed you? How can you be sure you are with child? Is there no chance it’s…well, I don’t suppose it could be Leo’s, since he only just returned.”

  Poppy and Leo locked gazes. He smiled—then wiped his expression blank, as though remembering that they were meant to be done with each other.

  So she did the same, because her fear about what would come next was intertwined with love. And she couldn’t show him how much she wanted to stay or she would never leave. She would beg him, and he would agree to whatever she wanted, because he was kind and great-hearted.

  She couldn’t ask that of him. She couldn’t ask anything of him at all.

  “Leo is a good man, and he will make a good duke,” she said. “For both reasons, you understand why I must leave.”

  Without waiting for a reply, she stood and crossed to the door. In the doorway, she hesitated, then added, “Thank you both for letting me call on you. Always. And thank you, Leo, for every minute I have been with you.”

  Even now, she wasn’t sorry for anything she’d given him: not her help, not her body, not her heart.

  Maybe she had more freedom than she’d realized. She could decide what to give and what to withhold. She could decide to walk away with her feet on the ground and her head held high.

  Or once more—just once—she could dance on a wire in the sky, and then leave England knowing she had tried to make things right between the people she loved best.

  Chapter Six

  * * *

  As soon as the study door closed behind Poppy, the clock chimed the quarter hour. Never in his life had Leo wanted so badly to destroy a mechanical device.

  “Leo.” His uncle spoke, tentative.

  Leo caught his chair with his foot, yanking it back, and tossed himself into the seat. “Something you need to say?” With deliberate carelessness, he put his boots up on the desk, one after the other. It wasn’t particularly comfortable, but damnation, it made him look unconcerned.

  Bernard’s mouth pursed. “This harshness doesn’t suit you.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t? Harshness doesn’t suit me?” With a thump-thump, he let his booted feet fall heavily to the floor. Drawing his chair toward the desk, he folded his hands and regarded
his uncle with false cheer. “Harshness doesn’t suit me. Nor did the lightness you’ve criticized my whole life. Tell me, Uncle, who would you like me to be? Not like my father, horse mad and careless. But surely not quite like Richard, paragon though he was, because he had no head for figures whatsoever.”

  It felt good to say all of this, to throw the unanswerable questions into the old man’s face. And then… and then there was nothing more that he wanted to say, after all, and no answer that could serve the purpose.

  He pulled the china dish toward him, letting the small objects within sift through his fingers. The marbles, he’d always think of as Poppy’s now. The old coins were from places he’d never go with her. The dice were—

  “Leo.” Bernard paused. “What do you want?”

  “To go to the devil.” But the phrase had lost its fire. “Or to Sussex.”

  “That’s not really what you want,” Bernard decided. The old man wore a considering expression, as if his head were full of thoughts he was filing into neat stacks.

  “Isn’t it? How wise you are, to know not only what you think, but what I think too.” Leo braced his hands against the edge of the desk and pushed back, balancing his chair on two legs. He looked around the room, small and dark as a cave. “You want to know what I want? Truly? Here are just a few things. I want to pull down these heavy draperies and let some light into the rooms. I want the battered old desk changed out for something new that has enough drawers for my papers. I don’t want to keep things just because they have always been kept—and that includes the steward at the Sussex estate.”

  Bernard blinked. Other than that, he did not move.

  “You did ask,” Leo added.

  Bernard reached out. With a thin-fingered hand that trembled slightly, he plucked a jade marble from the china dish. “I always thought you never had any respect for your family heritage.”