Dukes In Disguise

by Grace Burrowes, Susanna Ives, Emily Greenwood

  MacTavish wrapped up the bread in a towel and put the lid on the butter crock. “Summer is the busy time. Come winter, the evenings will be so long we’ll read every book in the house.”

  Which was fewer and fewer. Julianna passed the last of her bread to MacTavish and gave the stew another stir.

  “I will make a trade with you, children. While you fold the towels, I’ll read to you. First, I must bring our guest some bread and butter.”

  “Has he washed his hands?” Ralph asked.

  “Why can’t he eat with us?” Harold chorused. “There’s room at the table.”

  “He’s quite tired from his travels,” Julianna said—not a lie. “I’m being hospitable, but you’ll get to meet Cousin Connor soon. For now, you will sweep your crumbs for the chickens, wash your hands, and start on the towels, please.”

  Groans, sighs, the sound of the bench scraping back, but for all that, compliance with Julianna’s directions. For now. The boys listened to MacTavish for now too, but they also teased Roberta without mercy some days, tested Julianna’s authority, and lately had taken to using their fists with each other.

  “MacTavish, if you’d start the children on the laundry and regale them with some of Mr. Burns’s offerings, I’ll be along shortly to take over.”

  Over the last of his slice of bread, Mac sent her a look worthy of Ralph in a rebellious mood. The rain was still coming down though, and for Mac to spend the afternoon repairing harness in the carriage house, mucking Horty’s stall, and otherwise out in the damp would not do.

  Or perhaps Julianna simply wanted Mac to keep an eye on the children while she tended to Connor.

  As the children jostled each other at the wash basin and fought over the hand towel, Mac put the bread in the bread box along with the butter.

  “So who is this cousin, Julianna, and why must you be his Samaritan? He can well afford to stay at an inn.”

  “Why must you sneak the children jam, Rory MacTavish? You undermine my authority and waste our supplies. Come February, you’ll wish you’d saved a bit more of the jam.”

  Mac had the grace to look sheepish, for about two seconds, then he took up a rag and began scrubbing at the counter.

  “I’ll bring up the other two trunks, but I know what I saw, miss. You’ve welcomed trouble to this household.”

  Julianna had had nearly the same thought when John had come home with a squirming lot of dirty, hungry, unruly children. She’d been right, but she’d also been wrong too. John had loved the children, and the children were growing to love the farm.

  “Mr. Amadour honestly is a cousin, of sorts. His coach has suffered a mishap, and he was injured in the process. There’s a pair of fine gentleman’s breeches in the laundry that you’re welcome to take to the pawnbroker’s as soon as I work the stain out.”

  Which Julianna ought to be doing that instant.

  “Roberta can get out the stain. The wee girl’s a wonder in the laundry. My granddam had the same knack. That doesn’t change the fact that this cousin of yours will meddle, upset the children, and cause talk. Mr. Warren will not approve of talk.”

  “Who was the first Baptist?!” Harold yelled, flicking water in Ralph’s face. “John the Baptist!”

  “I’ll baptize you, you runt,” Ralph shouted back, elbowing Roberta aside. Ralph cuffed the water in the basin so it slapped over the side and splashed on Lucas’s and Harold’s sleeves. Roberta shrank back, looking worried, while Lucas snatched up the basin.

  “Enough!” Julianna snapped before Lucas could dash the remaining water in the other boys’ faces. “You will please clean up the mess you’ve made and meet MacTavish in the laundry. One more such outburst and no dessert for whoever’s involved.”

  Now she’d have to make a dessert, of course. But the riot subsided, and the children did a credible job of mopping at the floor.

  “Mr. Warren has caused talk,” Julianna said, keeping her voice down. A raspberry cobbler would do, but she’d promised her guest some bread and butter first. “He was glued to my side all morning and blathering about how well his mines are doing.”

  John and Maurice Warren had been friends, of a sort, but Maurice was convinced coal was the salvation of Yorkshire, when in fact, coal had been the salvation of the Warren family fortunes and the ruin of their tenants’ dreams. The men who went down into the mines were a rough lot, not particularly prone to showing up at Sunday services, or to seeing their children educated when those same children could earn coin beside their fathers.

  “Maurice Warren is the answer to your troubles,” MacTavish muttered. “Honest John would agree with me.”

  Honest John was dead, God rest his soul. “Please start Roberta on blotting the stained breeches. Read the children a bit of Tam o’ Shanter, and I’ll be along shortly.”

  Tam o’ Shanter was a sop to the males of the household. Drunkenness, lurking devils, mad storms, beautiful witches, wild dancing, all rendered in Mac’s best broad Scots.

  “Julianna…” Mac hung the drying towel just so over the back of a chair. “The trunks bear a crest. The Mowne crest. It’s a Scottish dukedom, but a dukedom nonetheless. Is this fellow related to your duchess cousin?”

  “Yes.”

  Mac was angling toward some point, one Julianna would not like. She got out the bread and butter again and cut two slices about twice the thickness she normally served herself. She buttered both slices, then she carved off a strip of ham from the joint hanging by the larder.

  “How close a relation?” Mac asked.

  He probably already knew, though how he knew, Julianna could not have said.

  “We have the Duke of Mowne himself under our roof. He is injured in a delicate location and seeks to convalesce quietly rather than be an object of gossip. I’ve promised him hospitality and discretion in equal measure. For the duration of his visit, he’s Cousin Connor Amadour, late of Kent, waiting for his coach to be repaired.”

  MacTavish swore in Gaelic. Something about when a mule gave birth, which was all but impossible, mules being sterile.

  “Language, Mac. Connor is family, and he’s hurt.”

  “He’s trouble. If I noticed the ducal crest on his luggage, Mr. Warren will notice a great deal more than that. Then too, dukes have a way of sticking their noses into anybody’s business, particularly the business of their family members.”

  Some cheese wouldn’t go amiss, and Yorkshire cheddars were excellent. “This duke has been happy to ignore us for years. His mother’s charitable impulses are no business of his. Have you been consorting with many dukes, Mac, that you can vouch for their habits?”

  The cheese wheel was heavy, and Julianna couldn’t resist a nibble for herself. She passed Mac a bite, which he did not decline.

  “You’ve got it all wrong, lass. Now that Mowne has realized he has a poor relation whose household is going threadbare, his pride will require him to take matters in hand.”

  Unease joined the cheese in Julianna’s belly. “He’ll be on his way and forget he ever tarried here. He nearly promised me that.”

  And Julianna had been both relieved and resentful to have those assurances.

  “You’ve never told the duchess about the children, or about how bare the larder has grown trying to feed them. Yon duke will soon realize you could not have had three boys who look nothing like you within the space of a year, much less well before you married John St. Bellan. His Grace will meddle, all right. He’ll send the boys to public school if they’re lucky, or send them to the parish if they’re not.”

  Maurice had hinted that Julianna ought to do the latter. Reduce the number of mouths she had to feed and enjoy herself as a “lady of the manor” ought.

  “I was arguably gentry when I married John,” she said, ladling stew into a bowl. “I’m barely a landowner now. You will cease conjuring worries from simple hospitality. Cousin Connor will not bother with the situation of a rural nobody to whom he’s not even related by blood.”

  Mac spared
a glance for the plate before Julianna: bread and butter, cheese, ham, a steamy bowl of stew. Closer to a feast than a snack, by the standards of the household.

  “He’s trouble,” Mac said again. “Expensive, meddling, titled trouble, and you’ve nothing with which to combat the mischief he’ll cause. Go carefully, miss, and don’t let his stew get cold.”

  Chapter Three

  * * *

  The stew was cold. Con ate it anyway, and contrary to the dire predictions of every nanny, mother, and governess in the realm, he did not expire as a result. Who knew? The bread, butter, ham, and cheese met the same fate, as did a glass of cold milk.

  He could not recall the last time he’d drunk milk as a beverage, but consuming every drop and crumb on the tray seemed only polite. The stew had lacked delicacy—no hint of tarragon, suggestion of oregano, or trace of pepper, but had been adequately salted.

  A stout knock sounded on the door, followed by the Scotsman hauling the second of Con’s trunks into the room. Clan MacTavish was an impecunious lot by reputation, but they’d not turned on their own when clearing the land to make way for sheep had become popular, and they’d played their politics adroitly through the whole Jacobite mess.

  “My thanks,” Con said. “I have the sense if I offered you a vail, you’d scowl me to perdition.”

  MacTavish dusted enormous hands. “You’d not be worth the bother. Make trouble for Julianna St. Bellan, though, and I’ll kill you properly dead.”

  Con remained seated rather than stand and reveal that he’d added a pillow to the padding on his armchair.

  “Nothing like Highland hospitality to make a traveler feel welcome, MacTavish.”

  “Nothing like deception, added expense, and imposing relations to make an old man feel out of charity with the Quality.”

  Lucere and Starlingham would like this fellow quite well, as did Con. “How bad are things?”

  MacTavish lumbered into the corridor and returned with the final trunk. “What business are the doings of this household of yours, Your Grace?”

  “I have a responsibility to every member of my family,” Con said, shoving to his feet. “If Julianna St. Bellan is in difficulties, she need only apply to me, and the matter will be taken in hand.” How it would be taken in hand, Con did not know, because every penny—every damned farthing—was spoken for.

  “She did apply to you,” MacTavish said, hands on kilted hips. “Three months later, your mother answered, with a small bank draft. Very small. Four children can eat a lot in three months. They can outgrow shoes, destroy clothing, require a blessed lot of coal to keep warm too. You did nothing in those months, while Julianna grieved a husband gone too soon, and dealt with a spring crop that wouldn’t plant itself.”

  Con added a letter to Mama among the correspondence he’d draft—by his own hand. His secretary would be leaving London for Scotland any day.

  “I’m here now,” he said, rather than explain himself to that patron saint of mental intransigence, a Scotsman who’d made up his mind. “I’ll not shirk responsibility when it stares me in the face, MacTavish.”

  MacTavish took a step closer. He smelled of wool, equine, and, oddly, of fresh bread. “You’ll not meddle, Cousin Connor. Maurice Warren will offer for Julianna the instant she looks favorably on his suit, and he’ll take adequate care of her.”

  Con felt an immediate dislike for this Warren fellow. A man didn’t wait for optimal market conditions before making a commitment of resources to a cause he believed in. Even Uncle Leo, whose grasp on a found penny rivaled John Coachman’s grip on his flask, admitted that investment should be guided by principles other than unfettered greed.

  “Spare me the household’s petty dramas,” Con said, “and I’ll spare you my meddling. My thanks again for bringing up the trunks.”

  The thanks—which were sincere—caused bushy brows to lower. “Can you get your backside properly trussed up, or must I help you with that too?”

  “I’ve managed for now,” Con said. “I will bring my tray down as soon as I’ve finished dressing. I’m not your enemy, MacTavish.”

  “You’re not Julianna’s friend.” He stalked out, closing the door quietly.

  Con managed to shove his feet into his boots without reopening his wound, piled his dirty dishes on his tray, and set out to find the kitchen. The tray was heavier than it looked, the kitchen farther away. Servants’ stairs would probably have shortened the journey, but Con had no idea how to locate them, for a well-built servants’ stair was usually well disguised too.

  As he opened yet another wrong door, insight struck. The Duke of Mowne expected his staff to know how to get him where he needed to be. He also expected them to ascertain the route, reserve accommodations, see to the horses, and otherwise handle the details that, upon reflection, weren’t details at all.

  The duke himself would never, ever ask for directions. Connor Amadour, though, was just a lowly fellow having a spot of difficulty and biding with family for the nonce. He might have asked directions of MacTavish and been ensconced in the kitchen before a hot cup of tea by now.

  Asking directions, dressing himself in half the time his valet took, napping when he was exhausted… life as a distant relation to the duke had much to recommend it. Much.

  * * *

  From the corner of her eye, Julianna saw the duke march past in the corridor beyond the laundry. He was having a good look around, apparently, though he’d remembered to bring his tray with him to the kitchen. She wanted to chase after him and make sure the door to every empty larder and pantry was closed, and that folded linen sat on shelves bare of provisions.

  “Then what happened?” Roberta asked, leaning all her weight on the blotting cloth pressed to the bloodstain on His Grace’s breeches.

  “You know what happens,” Harold said, snapping a towel within inches of Ralph’s arm. “The evil witch snatches up the stupid children, because the little girl can’t travel as fast as the little boy, who’d find his way home in no time, except his stupid sister is tagging along, as usual, and—”

  “Am I interrupting?”

  The duke, minus his tray, stood in the doorway, looking somewhat rested, if a bit wrinkled. The children fell silent at the sight of a fine gentleman in country attire, or perhaps simply because a stranger had intruded into their very laundry.

  “Cousin Connor,” Juliana said, closing her book of fairy tales around her finger. “Welcome. Children, please greet Mr. Connor Amador as I introduce you.”

  Please recall the manners Julianna hadn’t drilled them on in too long, in other words. She started with Roberta, the best bet when decorum and civility were wanted. Harold, Ralph, and Lucas managed floppy, boyish bows, and His Grace returned each child’s gesture with a bow of his own.

  Elegant, correct, deferential bows that nonetheless trumpeted good breeding and consequence.

  “I’m almost done,” Roberta said, holding up the breeches. “It’s nearly gone, but the rest must be brushed free of the cloth after it completely dries.”

  The duke appropriated the breeches before Julianna could intervene. The stain was still visible, but Roberta had the right of it. Blotting damp fabric was only a first step. A duke couldn’t know that, of course, but Roberta had tried her best, and for her brothers to hear her being chided—

  “You have worked a miracle,” the duke said, brushing his fingers over the stain. “A miracle, I tell you. I have despaired of these breeches, and they were my favorite pair. Miss Roberta, I am in awe.”

  The child had very likely never been called Miss Roberta before, nor had she smiled quite that smile. Sweet, bashful, and brimming with the suppressed glee of a girl complimented before her usual tormenters.

  Roberta would be made to pay, of course. When Julianna’s back was turned, Lucas would taunt, Harold would deride. Ralph might try to distract the other two, but he wouldn’t take on both of them at the same time. They weren’t bad boys, but they were approaching a bad age.

&nbs
p; “Was that the story of the clever children who bested the old witch?” the duke asked. “I haven’t heard it since I was a boy myself. Might I join you for the rest of the tale?”

  He gathered up a clean, folded towel and arranged it on a stool, then arranged himself on top of the towel.

  The children looked to Julianna, for one didn’t sit on clean laundry. “Cousin was in a coaching mishap,” Julianna said. “He’s injured.”

  “Too injured to fold towels?” Ralph asked.

  “Perhaps Miss Roberta could show me how it’s done?” Connor asked, hoisting the girl onto his lap. “Or perhaps I might take over the job of reading the story. Anybody who’s nasty to a pair of orphaned children deserves to come to a bad end, don’t you think?”

  More glances were exchanged, and Julianna felt the currents of the children’s bewilderment swirling about her. In his manners, his conversation, his cordial demeanor, the duke was turning the laundry room into something of a family parlor.

  “Please do read to us,” Julianna said, passing over the book and reaching for a towel from the mountain on the worktable.

  “Miss Roberta, where shall I start?”

  Roberta pointed to the page.

  “Roberta isn’t very good at folding towels,” Lucas said. “Her arms are too short.”

  “She’s just a girl,” Harold added, for once charitably.

  His Grace lowered the book slowly. “Just a girl? You’re Master Harold, correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Master Harold, if you’d oblige me by closing the door? We’re family, indirectly, and some discussions are meant only for the ears of our trusted relations.”

  This was nonsense, but Harold was off the bench and across the laundry without a word of protest. When the boy was back between his brothers, Connor brushed a hand over Roberta’s crown.

  “I ask you fellows,” Connor began, “who makes the best biscuits? Is it the butler? The steward? The haughty duke? No, it’s the cook, who began life as a girl paying attention to her elders in the kitchen. What would life be without the occasional biscuit?”