And she’d done nothing to correct their assumptions, had she? Because she didn’t want anyone thinking she was a designing hussy who’d got her claws into their duke while he was travelling about the country under the name of Willingale, dressed like some kind of tradesman.
‘His Grace is going to have Mrs Bennet—that’s our village dressmaker—come and bring you some fresh things in the morning, and measure you up for whatever else you may need,’ said Milly, vigorously soaping a washcloth. ‘Shall I do your back first, my lady? Or your hair?’
‘Oh, my hair,’ she said. If she could make her hair look tidy she might feel more able to go downstairs when it was time to face all those titled people again. Aunt Charity had always said it made her look as wild and immodest as her mother had actually been. She’d always made her braid it and cover it under caps and bonnets. ‘I can manage the rest myself, but my hair has always been a bit wild,’ she said as Milly handed over the washcloth. ‘Do you have a really strong comb you can lend me? Or perhaps we should just cut out the worst of the tangles.’
‘If we do then you need not worry that it will show. I might be a bit of a gabster, but I’m good with hair. Done all my sisters’ in my time, I have.’
‘Well, that’s good to know.’
And it was good to have the help of a maid again, too. A maid who didn’t seem to mind being a maid, at that. Milly was taking her time massaging her scalp, and it felt absolutely wonderful.
So wonderful that she actually closed her eyes and started to relax. And as she did so her spirit began to revive. Just as it always had whenever she’d been sent to her room to ‘think about what she’d done’. She’d never managed to stay cowed and guilty for long after one of her aunt’s rebukes. Because as she’d thought about whatever it was that was supposed to be unforgivably immodest, or vulgar, or sinful, she’d remembered how often her mother or father had done or said the very same thing. And she had refused to betray them by being ashamed of behaviour they would consider perfectly normal.
She didn’t fit in with Aunt Charity and her circle—that was what it amounted to. Any more than she’d fit in with a duke and his circle.
So there was no point in allowing herself to be intimidated by the luxurious surroundings, or the titles his family bore. Any more than she’d allowed herself to be beaten down by Aunt Charity’s pious homilies. She’d soon learned that no matter how hard she tried to fit in, she’d never measure up. Because of who her parents were. And so she’d stopped trying.
And she wasn’t going to start tying herself up in knots trying to fit in here, either. She was done with being intimidated. Gregory had no right to make her feel foolish, or guilty, or out of her depth. If dukes didn’t want people to assume they were ordinary men, then they had no business going around under false identities.
They had no right making out they were heroes, either. Why, if there had been any rescuing going on, she’d done her fair share. Who’d had the idea of singing for food money so that he hadn’t needed to pawn his watch, which was probably a priceless family heirloom? And whose quick thinking had saved him from being hauled up before the local magistrate by Mr Grumpy Farmer?
The moment Milly finished rinsing her hair she surged out of the tub on a wave of indignation. She hadn’t been able to rebel very successfully against Aunt Charity because she’d only been a girl. But she was a woman now. And over the last couple of days she’d discovered that she was well able to overcome whatever fate threw in her path.
And that included deceitful dukes!
‘Hand me that towel,’ she said imperiously to Milly. ‘And bring me those clothes.’
She was not going to let him hide her away up here as though she was something to be ashamed of.
‘Where are you going?’ cried Milly when she walked to the door and flung it open the moment she was dressed.
‘I need to have a few words with G...His Grace,’ she said, since she had no wish to offend the servants by referring to their lord and master by the name he’d given her. After all, her quarrel was with him, not them.
‘Oh, no, my lady, you cannot disturb His Grace just now,’ said Milly in horror. ‘He will be in his bath. He had Sam and me fetch the water for yours first, so he’s bound to be a few minutes behind. And what with Sam having no experience as a valet, even if His Grace is out of his bath I shouldn’t think he’ll be ready to receive anyone.’
‘I don’t care,’ she said, clenching her fists. After all, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen it all before, was it?
Though admittedly not wet.
A rather scandalous vision popped into her head of all those rippling muscles with soapsuds sliding slowly over them.
‘Oh, please, my lady,’ wailed Milly, bursting the vision, and with it all the soapsuds. ‘Don’t go out yet!’
Prudence whirled round to see Milly wringing her hands.
‘I don’t want no one to see you with your hair like that.’
As Milly pointed to her head Prudence realised she still had a towel wrapped round her wet hair.
‘They’ll all say I can’t get you presentable,’ Milly continued. ‘Let alone I haven’t treated your blisters yet. They’ll say I ain’t up to the job. And then I won’t be your maid no more. And I did so long to be your maid. And go to London and dress you for balls and such.’
Prudence wasn’t ever going to go to London—not as the Duchess of Halstead anyway. The very idea was preposterous. She’d thought she was going to be marrying the rather hard-up and ordinary Mr Willingale—a man who made his living somehow by righting wrongs and sticking up for the underdog. Not a duke who went about the countryside in disguise as a means to alleviate his boredom. For he’d admitted he’d been leading a dull life, hadn’t he?
But she did thank heaven that Milly had had the courage to speak her mind. If she’d gone barging into the Duke’s room while she was so angry with him that she’d forgotten she had her hair wrapped in a towel she would have definitely embarrassed herself. Oh, yes, she could just see him lounging back in his tub, looking down his imperious nose at her, while she stood over him screeching her complaints.
‘That’s a good point, Milly,’ she acknowledged. ‘Thank you.’ And she meant it. It was going to be much better to marshal her arguments so that she could break off their betrothal in a dignified manner. ‘You had better dry and style my hair so that I shall look my best when I next speak to His Grace.’
‘I shall run and fetch a comb and some scissors,’ said Milly with evident relief. ‘I won’t be but a twinkling.’
‘I will put some ointment on my feet while I’m waiting,’ said Prudence, going to the dressing table on which Mrs Hoskins had placed the pot.
The minute she’d gone Prudence plonked herself down and plunged her fingers into the pot of greenish salve. Right, then. She’d use the time until Milly had made her presentable enough to appear in public to prepare a speech in which she’d explain that she couldn’t marry Gregory, not now she knew who and what he really was.
But she hadn’t come up with anything much before Milly returned with the scissors. And also a maid with a tea tray. And Lady Mixby.
‘I hope you don’t think of this as an intrusion,’ said Lady Mixby. ‘I just thought I would check that you have everything you need. Particularly that cup of tea you didn’t drink downstairs. And just one or two little sandwiches and cakes, since you looked close to fainting. There is nothing worse, I find, than a hot bath if one is already a touch light-headed.’
There was nothing Prudence could do but say thank you.
Lady Mixby beamed at her. Then went across to the little table on which the maid had set down the tea tray. ‘I shall just pour you a cup and bring it to the dressing table while Milly makes a start on your hair. And then you can sip it and nibble at these few dainties while she works. Oh,’ she said, sett
ing the cup on the dressing table. ‘I see Mrs Hoskins has found you a gown. I hope you don’t mind that it appears to be dreadfully behind the fashion.’
Milly pulled her lips together and carried on doggedly combing out Prudence’s tangles.
‘Oh, no, I am very grateful for the dress. It is lovely to be in something clean and respectable again.’
Which was the absolute truth. Milly’s Sunday best had turned out to be a rather lovely gown of mossy green wool, with a demure neckline and long sleeves. Since it was exactly the sort of thing she was used to wearing, it made her feel much more like herself instead of some kind of impostor creeping in where she had no right to be and pretending to be something she wasn’t.
Milly flashed her a grateful look in the mirror as Lady Mixby went to the window seat.
‘I am sure it must be,’ said Lady Mixby, hitching herself up onto the cushions. ‘I cannot tell you how shocked I was to see you and Halstead standing on the threshold of my drawing room looking like a pair of gypsies. Oh, but only for a moment. For then, you see, I recalled the Hilliard portrait of the First Duke. And saw that Halstead wanted only a pearl earring and a lace ruff and he would have passed for an Elizabethan privateer.’
He would, at that.
‘Though I hear he has shaved now,’ Lady Mixby continued, ‘which is a great pity. He looked dangerously attractive with that hint of a beard.’ She sighed. ‘Milly, are you sure you should be using the scissors quite so freely? Poor Miss Carstairs will not have any hair left at this rate.’
‘I have given Milly leave to do what is necessary,’ Prudence explained when Milly’s nimble fingers stilled for a second. ‘It is much kinder for her to cut out the worst of the knots than attempt to remove them with the comb.’
‘Well, if you are sure...’
‘Oh, yes. It has been several days since I’ve had use of a comb, you see, and my hair has always been difficult to manage, even with regular brushing.’
Prudence had only refused to have it cut before out of a perverse determination to thwart Aunt Charity. She wouldn’t mind having it all cut off now, while Milly was at it. Only just as she opened her mouth to make the suggestion she recalled the look in Gregory’s eyes as he’d wound one curl round his finger. One curl of what he had called ‘russet glory’.
‘Several days! How perfectly frightful,’ Lady Mixby was saying. ‘And what kind of thief would steal a lady’s comb? My goodness—what wickedness there is in the world. You must have a macaroon,’ she said, hopping to her feet, going to the tea table and putting one on a plate. And then adding a couple more dainties and bringing them across.
‘There. Three cakes. I was just saying to Benderby this morning how things go in threes. First Hugo came to visit, which he only does when he is quite rolled up. And then that strange Mr Bodkin person arrived, in possession of Halstead’s ring. His very own signet ring, which was handed down from the First Duke—the one I told you he resembles so nearly. Or would if he would only keep the beard and get himself a pearl earring.’
She sighed wistfully, giving Prudence the impression she had a rather romantical notion of pirates. Or Elizabethans. Or possibly both.
‘That set us all in a bustle, as you can imagine. If dear Hugo hadn’t been here I should have been quite terrified,’ she said, absentmindedly popping the macaroon she’d fetched for Prudence into her own mouth. ‘But he took charge in the most masterful way, considering his age, taking Mr Bodkin aside and getting the whole story from him before explaining it to me. At least, he explained some things, which all sounded highly improbable—but then when gentlemen go off in pursuit of some wager they often get tangled up with the most extraordinary company.’
Prudence was about to agree, since she’d had pretty much the same thought earlier, but Lady Mixby hadn’t even paused to take breath.
‘Why, you only have to think of cock pits and boxing saloons and places of that nature. Not that I have ever been in one. Nor would I wish to. They sound perfectly frightful.’
While Lady Mixby was giving a delicate little shudder at the thought of what might go on in a boxing saloon, Prudence took the opportunity to inject a word or two of her own.
‘So Hugo told you all about the wager, did he?’ She said it as though she knew all about it, hoping that Lady Mixby would enlighten her without her having to admit she was almost completely in the dark.
‘Incredible, isn’t it?’ Lady Mixby’s eyes widened. She leaned forward in a conspiratorial fashion. ‘I would never have believed it of Halstead, had he not arrived here today without his valet and groom, looking so very unlike himself. Though, come to think of it, now I’ve seen his resemblance to the First Duke—who was little more than a pirate, really—I can believe him to be getting up to any amount of mischief. Not that I am implying he has done anything that is not fitting to his station in life.’
She looked at Prudence guiltily.
‘Has he? Oh,’ she added, before Prudence had a chance to draw breath. ‘Not that I would blame you if you had done something you ought not... The way he looked just now, I can see exactly how it might be that you couldn’t resist him. Though I would not have thought anything of the sort had you not said that about trusting him with your virtue. Oh, dear—how I do rattle on. I have ever been thus. It is why I never took, as a girl—why I never married. No rational man could have put up with me—that is what my father always said.’
‘I’m sure that is not true,’ said Prudence faintly, in the pause that came while Lady Mixby was popping a second fancy cake into her mouth.
‘Dear girl,’ she said, flicking crumbs from her skirt onto the expensive carpet. ‘It is such a sweet thing of you to say, but the truth is we were all as poor as church mice in spite of our name. Such is the way of the world. Girls with plain faces only get proposals if they have a dowry large enough to make up for it. Whereas the veriest drabs will have oodles of men paying them court if they have money to back them,’ she said with a shrug.
She was in blithe ignorance of the way she’d just plunged a knife into Prudence’s already sensitised heart. Because she did have money, didn’t she? Could that be why Gregory had tacitly accepted her proposal, in spite of the discrepancy in their rank? After all, the men in Aunt Charity’s congregation had suddenly started looking at her differently once it had become common knowledge that she was heiress to the Biddlestone fortune.
Was Gregory really as mercenary as the men of Stoketown?
‘But let us not dwell on the past,’ said Lady Mixby, sighing and clasping her pudgy hands together. ‘I am so looking forward to hearing all about how you met Halstead and how you came to fall in love. I know—you don’t need to remind me,’ she said, raising her hand in the air as though in surrender. ‘Not a word about any of it until we are all together after dinner. Speaking of which,’ she said, getting to her feet, ‘I should really go and get changed. Or should I?’ she said, just as she reached the door. ‘Would it be terribly tactless of me to dress up when you have nothing decent to wear? Halstead himself is borrowing the Sunday clothes of the under-gardener, who is the only one of the male staff with broad enough shoulders to have a shirt that would fit. I shall ask Benderby. Such a treasure, you know. I can always rely on her to come up with a practical solution.’
The room seemed very, very quiet once Lady Mixby had left. Prudence had never come across anyone with the ability to speak continuously without pausing for breath before. Or with the tendency to flit from one subject to another like a butterfly.
How on earth could Gregory have led her to believe for one minute that Lady Mixby was a dragon? She was the very opposite. It almost seemed wrong to describe her as an aunt at all. In fact she’d been so welcoming that she’d completely dispelled the slightly oppressive atmosphere of the room. It no longer felt as though the furnishings had been expressly designed to depress the pretensions of impost
ors, but rather to enfold any weary guest in a sumptuous sort of embrace.
The only trouble was that now Lady Mixby had told her that one of Gregory’s ancestors had been an Elizabethan pirate she couldn’t help picturing him with a pearl earring and a rapier in his hand. So instead of arming herself with a quiver full of clever remarks with which to confound him, she now spent the time before dinner imagining him engaged in various nefarious pursuits. The most frequent of which imaginings involved him mounted on a black horse, holding up a stagecoach at midnight. Though the one of him lounging back in his bathtub, naked apart from some strategically placed soapsuds, came a close second.
By the time she was ready, physically, to go downstairs, she was no more prepared to cross swords with His Grace the Duke of Halstead than poor betwattled Lady Mixby would ever be.
Chapter Fourteen
‘Miss Carstairs, how very much better you look,’ said Gregory when she entered the dining room.
Prudence couldn’t help raising one hand to her hair and flushing self-consciously. Did he really like the way she looked in this gown, with her hair neatly brushed, braided, and coiled on the top of her head?
His eyes followed the movement of her hand. He must have seen she was blushing, but his expression remained completely impassive. How different he was now from the man he’d been in that barn, when he’d described her hair as russet glory and trembled with the force of the desire he said he’d felt for her. This Gregory was a complete enigma. It was as if, the moment they’d set foot in Bramley Park, he’d deliberately snuffed out the man she’d come to know.
So how could she care so much about what he might be thinking? How could she long for him to find her as attractive as she found him, seeing him for the first time closely shaved and in a full set of clean clothes—even if they did belong to a humble gardener?
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