And every fiber of Lucere’s being desired this delightful, scheming morsel. But, good God, he was on his way to Scotland to meet his bride and begin his transformation. Was it ungentlemanly to be in lust with another woman just days before his engagement? Didn’t he vow to be a better man?
She passed his tea, giving him another potent smile. That smile coupled with the sunlight streaming through the window and sparkling in her pale eyes was a lethal combination to a man’s virtue. A hot current rushed through Lucere’s mind, silencing his thoughts, leaving only throbbing desire.
The decision was made not by his rational brain, but a part of his body located between his legs. He set his teacup upon its cracked saucer and said in a low voice, “Won’t you show me to my bedchamber?”
* * *
He followed behind her through corridors and stairs. She spoke of the general rules of the house, location of the privy, and the hours of dining. Her words made no impression, his mind focused exclusively on her lovely curves, imagining them unclad. He drew in her warm sugar-and-spice scent. The despondency that had been following him for months was dissipating like the sun chasing off the rain. Again, he was struck with a core truth. Rakishness made him happy. He couldn’t be a better man no matter how he tried. He was a rogue to the bone. A succulent, designing light-skirts had undone all his months of honest effort in a matter of minutes. As he mentally disparaged himself, thankfully Harris was listening and making appropriate conversation with Miss Primrose. Behind him, the twins giggled along.
Miss Primrose opened a door. “This can be your bedchamber, Mr. Stephens,” she said and gestured for him to step inside. “I believe it possesses everything a learned man may desire. A writing desk and shelves for any books you may have.”
The room was composed of scuffed furniture. A poster bed dominated the room. Its bedcovers were mostly white, save for the yellow stains. The walls were not adorned with paintings but pressed flowers and samplers in frames. The only architecturally pleasing feature was the arched window that afforded a view of the feral front garden and small drive.
He set down his bag and pressed upon the sloping mattress. “Yes, I do believe you have supplied me with everything I may desire,” he said in a low, dusky manner. How natural flirtation came to him—as thoughtless as breathing.
That lovely blush heated her cheeks again. Her ample breasts rose with a suck of her breath.
“I am pleased,” she whispered and spun around. “Mr. Harris, allow me to show you your accommodations.”
“Of course,” Harris said, giving way so that she might exit, and then followed behind.
Across the hall, Lucere could hear Harris complimenting his room and thanking her for her kind hospitality. Lucere waited until he heard retreating footfalls and giggles and then strolled to Harris’s room.
“Good God, Harris,” Lucere exclaimed. “Your apartment is much finer than mine. You even have a small sitting room. I believe Miss Primrose likes you considerably better than me.”
Harris dusted the battered wardrobe with a handkerchief. “Yes, Your Grace, it would appear so.”
Harris then turned quiet. Lucere read something in that heavy silence.
“I know you don’t approve of how I acted,” Lucere confessed. “I know I made a vow. But my God, have you ever seen such an angel? Lucifer’s angel, that is. What a calculating, ruthless liar beneath her mesmerizing voice and becoming smiles. Yes, yes, I do not miss the irony that I, too, am lying. But ours is an innocent ruse. She’s an ambitious schemer intent on dragging my good name in the mud. I didn’t know whether to laugh or succumb to indignant rage or… or make love to her.”
Lucere sank into a chair. Away from Miss Primrose’s all-consuming presence, his cold reason returned, as did his conscience, what little he possessed. “Should we relocate? I can’t deny my fascination for her. But I worry for any natural man not attracted to her. He should seek a physician. Don’t deny it, she even moved you. I saw it.”
Harris paused in his cleaning. “Your Grace, it is oft acknowledged among gentlemen that a bachelor might enjoy one last dalliance before beginning a lifetime of devotion to one lady.”
“Harris! You still astound me after all these years. I wouldn’t have expected such lurid reasoning from you.” Lucere rose again, suddenly edgy. “But what of you? The twins are certainly beautiful, but their insipid—”
“There has always been but one lady for me,” Harris said quietly. He opened his bag and laid a folded shirt upon the bed. He fingered its buttons, his heavy eyes narrowing as if peering into a painful memory.
A pall fell over the room except for a noisy fly buzzing in the windowsill.
Catherine, Lucere’s beloved nurse, had been Harris’s betrothed. Had the man remained the constant lover to her memory all these years?
Lucere felt ashamed. The depression that had lifted for a few minutes returned deeper than before. How could Lucere even contemplate a low dealing with a prostitute against such honest, abiding love as Harris and Catherine had shared?
A love that Lucere had taken away.
Without another word, he trudged back to his chamber, leaving Harris to his memories and Lucere to his self-loathing.
Chapter Four
* * *
In the kitchens, the twins were in such wild transports as to be nonsensical. Estella wanted to shake them.
“He’s so handsome!” Cecelia cried.
“Such a strong, manly jaw, and his legs!” Amelia exclaimed. “La! His pantaloons were as tight as his very skin.”
“His eyes were like… like chocolate,” Cecelia cried. The twins were not very poetic.
“Chocolate heavens,” Amelia improved. “But his lips—”
The girls devolved into inane laughter.
Estella berated herself for not better seeing to the twins’ moral education. They were turning into ignorant, wild-mannered flirts.
“I assume you are speaking of Mr. Stephens,” Estella said harshly.
“Good heavens, yes,” replied Amelia. “Not that scary, ugly old man. Whew!”
“Ugly?” Estella cried. “Old? Well, I found Mr. Harris exceedingly handsome, but then, I judged him by his agreeable character. You are only as pretty as your character.”
And by this measure, she found Mr. Stephens quite ugly indeed. His impertinent, assuming, and arrogant manners destroyed his handsome person. He seemed to enjoy baiting her, reveling in her discomfort. Many of his utterances bordered on disrespectable. She did not like him at all. He was of Mr. Todd’s ilk.
Oh, had she more than a few shillings in her coffers, she would have readily turned him away.
The twins rolled their eyes. “Lord, there she goes preaching again,” Amelia said.
“Well, if you find Mr. Stephens so to your liking, perhaps you will be kind enough as to keep him and his companion away from the back of the house while I work in the garden.” She had to keep up her appearance of gentility and not be caught pulling up vegetables. “But first, remove yourselves from those offensive gowns. What our guests thought of you I shudder to think.”
The sisters met this plan with much enthusiasm, except for the order to change their gowns. They simply ignored that part and hurried to the parlor, where they could best keep a view of the stairs, ready to accost the gentlemen should they venture down.
“Miss Estella!” Lottie burst through the scullery door, waving a receipt. “I mailed your letter! I mailed it!” Lottie tossed her arms around her mistress.
“Thank you, my love,” Estella said, taking the receipt. “Now, won’t you please refill the water in the white and gold rooms? We have some gentleman lodgers.”
“Lodgers!” Lottie clapped her hands and dashed off to draw water.
The income Estella earned from two lodgers would hardly stop Mr. Todd but might stave him off a bit longer, giving her time to find more money.
Estella glanced at the receipt. Please help, she said in a silent prayer to the Duke of Lucere
and then headed to her mother’s room. Outside the door, she forced her face into a pleasant countenance, like an actress about to walk on stage to play the role of dutiful, cheerful daughter.
She opened the door. The smell of medicine assailed her nose. Her mother was sitting in her invalid couch. Her back was propped by pillows, and a blue wool blanket lay across her body. Estella and her sisters were mirrors of their mother. Yet, since Mrs. Primrose’s heart ailments, the physician had advised “no excitement” and prescribed her draughts that sedated her boisterous spirits. In the last year, she had rapidly aged, now appearing twenty years older than her forty-five years. Her hair was almost the shade of her white cap. Her skin possessed a chalky pallor, and her pale eyes appeared to pop from their shadowed sockets. Estella remembered when her beautiful face was bright and flush, her eyes glittering with merriment.
“My dear, you look tired,” her mother said.
“The wind kept me up last night.” Estella fibbed to divert the conversation from unpleasantness.
“Ah, you should be in bed, then. Why did you not send a servant?”
“They are busy seeing to the broth and laundry.”
The extent to which Estella had lied about the state of the family’s situation was shameful. But she had to spare Mama the truth else it would bring on another heart spasm.
“I’m late giving you your draughts.” Estella opened a bottle from the side table and poured the recommended amount into a spoon.
Mrs. Primrose allowed her daughter to guide the spoon to her lips. After she had swallowed, she asked, “How is our little ‘pin money solution’ coming along?” She meant the lodging house. Although her own father had once run an inn, she considered business vulgar upon the marriage into the Primrose family.
“It’s doing wonderfully. We have two new boarders today.”
“Capital. Soon we can take away our sign and put this sad episode behind us. I’m sorry that you had to take on the burden of overseeing it. I’m quite proud of my beautiful daughter.” She squeezed Estella’s arm. “A true Primrose, heart and soul.”
Estella gave her a weak smile and placed the cork back in the bottle.
Her mother rapped her armrest. “But I fail to understand why you haven’t secured a husband yet. I don’t know what is the matter with these Lesser Puddlebury gentlemen. Slow dullards, to pass you up. Don’t you worry, my dear. Once we no longer need the ‘pin money solution,’ you shall go to London and find you a fitting husband. Someone deserving of you, who will make you as happy as your father made me.”
Estella remained quiet. She was no more going to London than the Prince Regent would turn Methodist. Despite her wild desires to travel to the continent, she feared the farthest she would ever go was up the lane to Mr. Todd’s residence.
Her mother chattered on. “And how are Cecelia and Amelia’s lessons coming along?”
“They are studying geography today.”
“Such kindly, considerate ladies. How well you do with them. Please, send them up so that I might quiz them myself.”
“Pray, you must rest now. I shall send the twins up before dinner.”
“Very well.” Her mother paused. “Estella, my dearest, I do hate to be a bother…” She paused again. “I’m perfectly happy being attended by a servant.” In other words, her mother needed her chamber pot emptied but considered it too impolite to ask.
Estella took the pot to the privy and then returned it to its owner.
Then she washed up, donned her gloves and old boots, and trudged out to the garden to dig up carrots and potatoes. Their usual dinner of toast, cheese, and broth would not do. As she rooted about for potatoes, Mr. Stephens’s intense, impertinent gaze filled her mind. How his eyes penetrated into her, as if he could see beneath her shift. She shivered. She pulled out a round potato, inspected it, and then tossed it in her bucket. She desperately needed the money, but at the same time, she hoped Mr. Stephens found a position very soon.
She gazed off at the woods rising behind the garden and imagined herself fleeing into their shade, running and running until she reached Italy or Holland. She knew an ocean separated her from the continent, but why worry about such trifling details in wild, liberating fantasies. As her body dug up potatoes and then removed carrots by their stems, her mind roamed quietly through the old European streets as she had read them described in books, stopping into the ateliers or listening to the lovely music in the grand old cathedrals.
* * *
Lucere renewed his vow to be a better man. He would pass the night alone in his bedchamber, provided the rickety home didn’t collapse. He would remove to an inn tomorrow. Until then, he would enjoy Estella’s pretty face as one enjoyed art in a gallery. At a cold distance.
Yet, at dinner, when Estella spurned him entirely to speak to Harris, an ugly claw of jealousy sank into Lucere’s chest. Harris received the soft light of her eyes, all her smiles, even a beautiful silvery laugh. She asked him one question after the next, listening to his answers with an awed expression, as though he were some modern-day Plato.
Lucere received no such inquiries. No solicitations for his opinion. No admiration. He was not even worth a spare look.
Was Estella setting her sights on Harris as her evening’s customer? Did she think him more pliable? Well, she would find no luck in that quarter. Harris wouldn’t besmirch his love for Catherine with a tart.
Lucere stabbed a potato. Dinner at the Duke of Lucere’s Boarding House was hardly up to the Duke of Lucere’s standards—just potatoes, carrots, cold mutton, and stale bread. Instead of focusing on the want of food, he tried to capture Estella’s attention through her sisters. He casually mentioned that he had lived in London as a tutor to a baron and had often gone to the theaters and that his employer kindly allowed him to attend some balls. Lucere knew all country ladies loved the glamorous world of London, and the twins eagerly leaped on his bait. They implored him to reveal theater and society gossip. He recounted the most scandalous tattle he knew, filled with illicit love affairs and betrayals. The blushing twins begged further lurid details to fuel their giggles.
Estella didn’t grace Lucere with even one glance. But he noted that her pleasant façade turned rigid, and she kept a murderous grip on her fork as she continued conversation with Harris about such innocuous things as the weather and the growing seasons of various flowers.
Finally, Lucere could be ignored no longer and broke in. “Aside from lavender-strewn summer fields, Miss Primrose, what else do you enjoy?”
“She enjoys worrying and nagging,” Amelia piped up. She and her twin laughed at her weak witticism.
How the beautiful face palls when there is no grace underneath to support it, Lucere thought. He gave the twins a glare. They should take lessons from their elder sister if they wished to succeed in their profession.
“I enjoy traveling,” Estella said after a long moment’s consideration. Why was knowing what she enjoyed so hard for her to determine?
“Ah!” Lucere said. “And where have you traveled?”
“London and Bath,” she supplied.
“That’s rather meager travel,” Lucere observed.
“I guess it’s more of a dream than a reality.”
“In your dreams, where do you visit?” Lucere said, oiling his voice.
Her expression turned wistful. “Italy. I desire to see Rome and Venice. I even tried to teach myself Italian before… well, before Grandfather died and… this.” She gestured around her. “I daresay I have forgotten every word I learned.”
So her grandfather’s death had sunk her family into this shameful life. A sad, yet common theme for women with no male to support them. It wasn’t fair the disadvantages life dealt women.
“Sono stato al paese dell’arte e della musica,” he said.
Her lips spread into a bright grin. It caressed him like a warm breeze. “You’ve been to Italy?” she cried.
“Ah yes, Rome, Venice, and Florence.”
S
he leaned in, suddenly appearing very young. He had assumed she was in her late twenties, but perhaps he was wrong on that count.
“Would you please tell me about them?” she said. “Please. I would love to hear.”
Her eyes, sparkling with admiration, fixed on his face. She waited in happy suspense for him to speak. It would take a stronger man than he to deny her anything. All he had were tales from his grand tour. He modified them, turning himself into a poor, wandering Oxford student. He told her about afternoons passed sunning himself outside of San Marco Cathedral, spending evenings in opera houses mesmerized by the voices, walking through fields lined with grapes and olives, roaming at sunset through the vastness of the Coliseum, and drifting in a lovely red-wine haze through the canals of Venice. Her features were aglow with fascination. He felt a strange, light sensation as if he were floating
London’s most ravishing courtesans had danced around him for years, hoping for his patronage. This country light-skirts outshone them all. She was too good at her profession. Her pale gaze had the power to make a man think that nothing and no one else mattered in the world but him.
Damn it, he had made a deathbed vow—the most serious of vows—to his dying father to be a better man.
Harris’s words echoed, It is oft acknowledged among gentlemen that a bachelor might enjoy one last dalliance before beginning a lifetime of devotion to one lady.
Was he truly breaking his vow? In France, they celebrated Carnival before the onset of Lent. This could be his Carnival.
Still he hesitated.
After dinner, Estella placed a bottle on the table and ushered the twins out, making a darling little lesson that proper ladies repair to the drawing room so that gentlemen could enjoy their port.
Enjoy was not a word that Lucere would use to describe drinking the watered-down vinegar. Without Estella, the room returned to its shabbiness. The table linen was stained. One chair was missing an arm. Lucere’s spirit sank back into gloominess. He forced himself to empty his glass, probably killing off several vital organs in the process.
Dukes In Disguise Page 15
