Which was the first thing his uncle Edward noticed too when he strode into the stables a second later.
“Jeremy!” Edward thundered. The starlings in the rafters let out startled cries and took flight almost as one as his voice boomed through the quiet, sun-dappled building. And they weren’t the only things Jeremy’s uncle startled. Maggie yelped and, blushing scarlet, folded her arms quickly over her half-exposed breasts.
“What,” Edward demanded furiously, “in hell is going on in here?”
“Good God, Uncle Edward,” Jeremy drawled from the hay bale upon which he still lounged. “Must you always time your entrances so ill? Maggie and I were just getting to know one another again.”
“Margaret.” She jumped at the balefulness in Lord Edward’s voice. He sounded angrier than Maggie had ever heard him, including the time that he’d caught her and Jeremy tying firecrackers to the back of the vicar’s brougham. “Get back to your mother. Now.”
“Yes, my lord.” Maggie needed no more urging. Without another word, she spun round and fled—or tried to. She was stopped dead in her tracks when someone reached out and seized one of the metal hoops of her crinoline through the material at the back of her skirt. Letting out a soft oof as the ribbons that kept her crinoline tied around her waist cut into her midriff, she flicked an accusing gaze over her shoulder. But Jeremy wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at his uncle.
“There’s no need to send Maggie scampering back to her mother,” the duke—for that’s exactly what the imperiousness of Jeremy’s voice put Maggie in mind of—said. “She wasn’t doing anything wrong. If you’re going to be angry with someone, be angry with me, but Maggie’s completely innocent—”
“Oh, I’m perfectly aware of Maggie’s innocence,” Lord Edward said. Maggie’s trepidation grew as the older man began shrugging out of his coat—Lord Edward, whom she’d never seen with so much as a hair out of place, was disrobing in a stable! “It’s you I’m preparing to thrash until there isn’t a shred of flesh left on your body. But if you’d like Maggie to watch while I do so, she’s perfectly welcome to …”
Maggie let out a squeak of alarm and, yanking her crinoline hoop out of Jeremy’s grasp, turned and ran for all she was worth.
Chapter 5
Watching Maggie’s booted feet fly as she disappeared into the sunshine outside the stable doors, Jeremy frowned. “You needn’t have frightened her witless, you know,” he said, irritably, to his uncle.
“Oh, no,” Edward said, concentrating on the shirt cuffs he was carefully rolling up. “You were doing that admirably yourself.”
“Me?” Jeremy looked offended. “I wasn’t frightening her.”
“Weren’t you?” Edward, his shirtsleeves pushed up over his elbows, loosened his cravat. “Then why are you bleeding at the mouth?”
Jeremy lifted a hand to his lip, having long since forgotten the cut there. “Oh, that.” He chuckled. “Can you believe that? I taught her that right cross, you know. I can’t say I ever expected her to use it on me.”
“Didn’t you?” Edward glared at him. “What did you think she was going to do, Jerry? Swoon in your arms?”
“Well,” he said. “They usually do. In fact, this is the first time one didn’t. Haven’t quite figured out why yet, but—”
Edward looked grim. “Haven’t you? Try this one: You may have reached the age of majority, Jerry, but Maggie Herbert is still a child.”
“Oh, please,” Jeremy said disgustedly. “She’s nearly seventeen. My mother gave birth to me at seventeen.”
Edward, though he looked a little surprised at Jeremy’s reference to his mother, of whom he spoke rarely, if at all, said only, “Maggie Herbert is the daughter of a knight. Her father is your financial advisor and my friend—” Jeremy rolled his eyes at that, since he’d often overheard his uncle complaining about Sir Arthur’s somewhat trying personality, but Edward continued, “She is here as a guest of my wife, which means she is visiting Rawlings Manor under your protection, and you had the gall—no, excuse me, the stupidity—to attempt to seduce her, in a stable, no less, as if she were some barmaid you happened to meet one night while you were out carousing with your friends—”
“That isn’t true,” Jeremy said, with wounded dignity. “I would never attempt to seduce a barmaid in a stable. At the very least, I would demand that she take me to a room with a bed before I so much as laid a hand on her—”
He saw the fist coming. He had to have seen it coming. But to Edward’s amazement, his nephew didn’t duck, or in any way try to avoid the blow. His knuckles met Jeremy’s jaw with a solid thunk, and Jeremy went down, falling back upon the pile of hay bales.
Shaking his hand, which throbbed from the force of the blow—it had been a while since Edward had last participated in a brawl; members of the House of Lords were generally discouraged from fisticuffs—he said, with a good deal of indignation, “I’m sorry I had to do that. But, by God, Jerry—”
“I know.” Jeremy, hay sticking up from his mop of unruly black hair, sat up, carefully stroking his twice-bruised jawbone. “I know. I deserved it.”
“That and more,” Edward said severely. “You’ll ride over to Herbert Park tonight and apologize, to both Maggie—if she’ll see you, which I doubt—and to her parents. You’ll leave for the Continent first thing tomorrow morning.” Crossing over to where Jeremy sat, Edward held out a hand to help the younger man to his feet. “The sooner you’re out of the country,” he said, grunting as he lifted Jeremy’s considerable weight, “the sooner we’ll all be able to put this wretched incident behind us.”
On his feet again, Jeremy began swatting at the pieces of straw that clung to his trousers. “And then when will the wedding be? Six months? Do you think I’ll still have to wait six months before coming back, to be on the safe side? Because of Pierce, I mean?”
Edward, who was flexing his throbbing hand experimentally, as if uncertain whether or not he might have broken a knuckle, grew still, and cast his nephew a sharp glance. “What wedding?” he asked suspiciously.
“The wedding,” Jeremy said, pulling a piece of straw from his hair. “You know. Mine and Maggie’s.”
Edward stared. “You asked Maggie Herbert to marry you?”
“Well, no,” Jeremy said. He let out an uncomfortable laugh. “Of course not! No man wants to marry, does he?” The laughter died as abruptly as it had begun, and Jeremy asked nervously, “But aren’t you going to make me marry her? You know, since you caught us, uh, how shall I put it? In flagrante delicto?”
“Pleased as I am to learn that you acquired some Latin, anyway, during your sojourn at Oxford,” Edward said carefully, “I must confess that no, I never had any intention of forcing you to marry Maggie Herbert.”
To Edward’s utter astonishment, his nephew actually looked disappointed. “But Uncle,” he said. “I’ve seriously compromised her. I would think—”
“All I saw was that the front of her dress was undone,” Edward interrupted. He raised his still-throbbing fist meaningfully. “Are you telling me that you really did seduce her?”
Jeremy eyed the fist. “Well,” he said. “No. But I would have, if she hadn’t tried to knock my head off. And you hadn’t walked in, of course.”
“All the more reason to send you off to France,” Edward said complacently. He lowered his arm. “You can seduce all the French girls you like. Just stay away from the English ones, especially Maggie Herbert. Now go and get yourself cleaned up. Your aunt was asking about you. That’s why I came looking for you in the first place.”
Edward went to the stall door across which he’d laid his coat and cravat. When he turned around again, he found Jeremy standing before him, his jaw looking red and swollen, his gray eyes stormy with anger.
“Why not?” he demanded, in a low, gravelly voice his uncle didn’t recognize.
Taken aback, Edward said, “I beg your pardon?”
“Why not Maggie?” Both of Jeremy’s hands, his uncle noted
cautiously, were curled into fists at his sides. “You don’t think she’d make a good duchess? You don’t think she’s good enough for me?”
Calmly, Edward began shrugging into his coat. “On the contrary,” he said, his kindly tone in direct contrast with the harsh words he uttered. “Maggie would make a splendid duchess. It’s you, my boy, who isn’t good enough for her.”
A muscle in Jeremy’s cheek leapt, just once. “Because of who my mother was?” he demanded sharply.
Edward let out a bark of humorless laughter. “Good God, no. This hasn’t a thing to do with the fact that your mother was a whore.” When Jeremy didn’t flinch at the word, Edward went on, feeling slightly more respect for the younger man. “No, you don’t deserve Maggie—or any other decent sort of woman—because you’re nothing but a ne’er-do-well.”
Jeremy blinked at him. “A what?”
“Jerry, I’m surprised at you.” Edward shook his head as if greatly disappointed in his nephew … but inwardly, he was smiling. “Haven’t you ever noticed how dedicated your aunt Pegeen is to all those charities and foundations she donates to in your name? Why, there are a dozen orphans tearing up the rose beds in the garden this very instant, because Pegeen is hosting some kind of picnic for them.” When Jeremy looked blank, Edward rolled his eyes. “She raised you from a baby, Jerry. Hasn’t anything she taught you sunk in? Your aunt has devoted her life to making this world a better place, for children, for women, for the poor. That’s what you ought to be doing.”
“Philanthropic works?” Jeremy asked, the distaste he felt at the thought of involving himself in such activities evident in his expression.
“Not necessarily,” Edward said impatiently. “But you’ve got to make something out of the life you’ve been given.”
“Why should I have to?” Jeremy inquired belligerently. “I’m a duke.”
“It’s because you’re a duke that it’s even more essential that you make something of yourself. You’ve got to show that you’re worthy of the title. You can’t simply spend your entire life fighting duels and seducing young women—”
“Why not?” Jeremy demanded. “When you were my age, that’s all you did.”
“Yes,” Edward said. He raised an index finger. He didn’t mean to look pedantic. He simply couldn’t help it. “Yes, you’re right, I did. I was like you. I thought my only obligation in life was to enjoy myself. But you see, Jeremy, when I met your aunt, I learned how very wrong I’d been. Because if winning a particular woman is important to you, you can’t simply try to seduce her in a stable and expect her parents to force her to marry you—”
“That isn’t precisely what I set out to do,” Jeremy grumbled, flushing a little.
“—and you can’t expect any woman worth winning to be impressed with you simply because you’re in possession of a title. No, you’ve got to make yourself at least appear to be worth her while … and quite frankly, the man I was when I met your aunt wasn’t worth anything, except a few hundred pounds a month in tailoring bills, which she quickly pointed out to me. But I changed, you see, Jerry. I made something of myself. I found something I did and did well—arguing—and I turned it into an occupation. Now I argue, quite effectively, for the betterment—I believe, any way—of the people of England. That’s what you’ve got to do, Jerry. You’ve got to find out what you do well, and then do it. That’s when you’ll find a girl like Maggie and—”
“I don’t want a girl like Maggie,” Jeremy snapped. “I want her.”
Edward raised his eyebrows. It wasn’t that he was surprised, particularly. After all, Maggie Herbert was one of the only women in Jeremy’s acquaintance who hadn’t the slightest interest in becoming a duchess. It was just that Edward wasn’t sure that Jeremy was aware that that might be exactly where his attraction to her lay. “Well,” Edward said. “Regardless. You’ve got to find something—”
“The only thing I can do,” Jeremy said firmly, “is fight.”
Edward nodded. “Well, yes, you’ve certainly shown a certain aptitude for that. Certainly a scholar’s life hasn’t held any appeal for you, and I doubt politics is exactly your cup of—”
“I can fight,” Jeremy said, again. He didn’t seem to be listening to his uncle anymore. In fact, he turned his back on him, and quickly paced a few yards through the straw. “I’m best at fencing, but I can shoot, as well. Also, I’m good on a horse.”
“Right,” Edward said slowly. “And those are admirable qualities. But—”
Jeremy stopped pacing a few feet away from the door to King’s stall. Edward saw his shoulders go back, and his head come up. “That’s it,” Jeremy said, apparently to his horse, since his back was to his uncle. “I shall go into the cavalry.”
It was a statement, not a question. Edward said, “Well, now, let’s see if we can examine—”
“There’s nothing to examine,” Jeremy interrupted matter-of-factly. He turned to face his uncle. “I need an occupation. The army’s as good as any. It isn’t possible to purchase commissions anymore, so I shall have to earn the rank of officer. That’s just as well. It’s more impressive to earn something than to buy it.”
Edward began to experience a growing sense of unease. “Yes, but Jeremy, the army is really more for, er, second sons, young men who don’t expect to inherit a title or property and don’t care to go into the church. Dukes generally don’t—”
“I shall join the Horse Guards,” Jeremy said. Edward wasn’t certain if he hadn’t heard him, or was simply ignoring him. Jeremy began pacing again, excitedly this time. “I shall ask to be stationed in India. That’s the most dangerous place we have armies stationed right now, isn’t it? Too bad there isn’t a war on. I should have quite liked a war. Well, perhaps I can start one.” He headed, without another word, for the stable doors.
“Jeremy,” Edward called after him.
Jeremy turned, as if surprised his uncle was still there. “Yes?”
“You aren’t—you aren’t serious, are you?” Edward cleared his throat. “You can’t really mean that you intend to join Her Majesty’s army, can you?”
“Well, Uncle,” Jeremy said with a grin. “I’m a duke, am I not? I can do anything I like.”
Chapter 6
“What?” Pegeen cried, nearly dropping the silver-backed hairbrush she held.
“The cavalry,” Edward said. He sat on the edge of their bed, a few feet away from his wife’s dressing table, his elbows on his knees. His expression was one of abject misery. “At least, that’s what he said.”
“But Edward …” Pegeen stood up, the hairbrush hanging limply from her fingers. “But Edward, the army? He told you he’s joining the army?”
“The cavalry,” Edward said again. He watched helplessly as his wife, whom he’d interrupted while she was dressing for dinner, began to pace the length of their bedroom, wearing only a camisole and a new pair of French-cut pantaloons. In her hands, she clutched the hairbrush, as if it were some kind of link to the orderly existence she’d led up until he’d come in, a few moments ago, and delivered this unexpected piece of news.
“The cavalry?” Pegeen’s husky voice rose, a note of panic creeping into it. “The cavalry? My God, Edward, he’ll be killed. He won’t last a minute in the cavalry. He’s much too sensitive—”
Edward wondered if he ought to reveal to his wife the fact that her sensitive nephew had, in fact, fatally wounded a man in a duel just the day before. He thought perhaps he’d wait until she calmed down a little before doing so, however.
“What’s a boy like Jerry going to do in the cavalry?” she demanded, storming past the bed and then doing an about-face, her long, dark hair swinging out behind her in a smooth arc, before storming off in the opposite direction. “He’ll be shot the first day—”
“He won’t be shot,” Edward said. “The Horse Guards employ swords, not pistols.”
“It doesn’t matter what kind of weapon he employs. He won’t be able to defend himself,” Pegeen cried. “H
e can’t even bring himself to shoot a pheasant. He’ll never actually be able to kill a live person!”
“Well,” Edward said, slowly. “Actually—”
“And India! My God, Edward! India! He’ll catch malaria and die, alone in a strange, hot country—”
“Pegeen,” Edward said, watching her as she paced back and forth across the rose-patterned carpet.
“You’ve got to stop him,” she said. “That’s all there is to it. You’ve got to forbid it, Edward.”
“I can’t forbid it, Pegeen,” Edward said tiredly. “He’s a grown man. He can make his own decisions.”
“A grown man!” Pegeen whirled on him, pointing the hairbrush accusingly at his chest. “A grown man! He’s a boy, Edward. He’s barely twenty-one. And if you don’t stop him, he’ll never see twenty-two!”
“Legally,” Edward said, “he’s a man now, Pegeen.” Edward reached out and gently pried the hairbrush out of her fingers, so she could no longer brandish it like a weapon. “We can’t stop him from doing anything he wants to do. And I don’t think the army is such a bad choice, really. It will teach him some discipline. And it will keep him away from Maggie—”
“Maggie!” Pegeen’s hands went to her burning cheeks. “Oh, Lord! I’ll never be able to forgive myself for that. Poor Maggie!”
“Forgive yourself?” Snaking out a long arm, Edward took hold of his wife’s hips and pulled her onto his lap. “What did you have to do with it? I don’t recall seeing you in that stable.”
“Oh, God!” Mortified, Pegeen hid her face against her husband’s neck. “How will I ever be able to face Anne—not to mention her mother—again? How could he, Edward?” She banged Edward’s chest with a small, impotent fist. “How could he?”
Edward shook his head, although he understood perfectly well how his nephew could have done something so reprehensible … and tempting. Edward, who had actually been around to witness the process, had still been as surprised as his nephew at how well Sir Arthur’s youngest daughter had turned out. Had he been twenty-one and single, he’d have acted exactly as Jeremy had. He wouldn’t, however, have been so amenable to marrying the girl. That was the curious part of the matter, as far as Edward was concerned.
Portrait of My Heart Page 6
