Peter couldn’t very well blame the chit for wanting out of his presence. In his current state of mind, he would much prefer not to be left in a room with himself, were such a feat possible.
His sisters and Miss Matthews said their goodbyes to the Marlboroughs, and then took their leave of him as well. “We really must dress for the evening, ladies,” Sophie said. “And Char, do try not to sulk over the brief visit with Theodora. You see her nearly every day. It leaves you seeming rather petulant and missish when you pout like that.”
“I’m not pouting. It isn’t my fault that he,” Charlotte said with a huff and a head-jerk in his direction, “is in such a foul mood to the point that we could barely speak with each other at all.”
Peter bit his tongue. The last thing he needed now was to have his sisters band together against him. Was it not enough to have his mother scold him a troublesome child in front of people outside the immediate family?
“Nevertheless,” Sophie said, “we should all be on our way.” She shooed Charlotte into the hall with Miss Matthews following behind a bit more leisurely.
“Miss Matthews, I require a word with you.”
Damnation. Stopping her had certainly not been his plan, but the words were out of his mouth before he could stop himself.
She slowed and faced him. “Your Grace?” He couldn’t decide if apprehension or aversion was the more dominant feature on her countenance. Either way, she stopped.
Sophie sent him an accusing glance over her shoulder before slipping up the stairs and out of sight.
And now—now he needed to determine what on earth to say to the woman whose cat was rubbing figure-eights between her legs and pushing its head against the inside hem of her dress.
“You...you were quite brave to face a charging horse to save that girl today.”
“Thank you.” Her eyes squinted and flashed as she stared up at him and her hands fidgeted before her, clutching and shifting a fan back and forth between them.
Her nerves were enough to drive him to distraction. He wanted to take the fan from her and entwine his hands with hers. And that only left him annoyed with himself for experiencing such a bothersome reaction to such a thoroughly inappropriate lady.
“You will refrain from acting in such a stupid manner in the future,” he snapped before he could think better of it. “Allow someone with more experience handling horses to see to them. You might have been hurt.”
Oh, blast. Now he had proved himself a fool.
“Stupid, Your Grace?” She glared at him with a stare that would melt steel. “You dare to call me stupid? I’ll have you know that while my parents were unable to afford to pay for my education, I was nevertheless educated as well as any daughter of any peer.”
Never mind the fact that she’d called him asinine only hours previously. She had clearly forgotten as much.
Before he could retract her statement, she advanced upon him. Within mere seconds, she stood toe-to-toe with him, pushing a finger into his chest to punctuate her words. “No one—not even a bloody duke—calls me stupid, Your Grace.”
“I did not—”
“You most certainly did call me stupid.” She poked his chest again, causing him to take a step back toward the hearth. “And if it ever happens again, you’ll be quite sorry. I’ll be certain of it.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You dare to threaten me?”
“Oh, you’d better believe I’m threatening you. I am not intimidated by you, no matter how hard you try.”
Good God, her brown eyes had darkened so much he thought them fully black. What a bewilderingly sultry sight. The urge to kiss her again consumed him, deeper, harder than the first time. He settled for grasping her hand that was, yet again, poking him in the chest to stop her assault.
“You,” he said, his voice low, menacing, “will do as you’re told. Which means you will leave the heroics to someone better qualified for the task than yourself from this point forward.”
The need to argue with him made itself clear in the fire blazing in her eyes, but she said nothing else when he squeezed tighter against her arm. Perhaps too tight. Devil take it. A single tear pooled in her eye but neglected to spill over.
At least she kept it from falling. He could handle virtually any situation, but a woman’s tears almost always proved to be his undoing.
He loosened his grip but didn’t release her. Not yet. He couldn’t make himself break off that limited contact, no matter how inappropriate it was of him. “Have I made myself perfectly clear, Miss Matthews?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” she ground out through clenched teeth.
“Good. You may go.”
She tugged against him, but he still held her tight enough that she couldn’t remove herself from his grip. “Kindly unhand me, and I’ll be glad to do just that.”
The look in her eyes nearly brought him to his knees—something between disgust and hatred, but not squarely on either end of the spectrum. He jerked his hand away from her.
She spun on her heels and fled from the room, racing up the stairs like her life depended upon it.
Christ above, he was everything she’d called him and worse. Never in his life had he been such a bumbling idiot. “Miss Matthews?” he called after her.
While she neither faced him nor responded, she did at least stop her progress, one hand clenching the stair rail so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
“I look forward to seeing you this evening.”
A single, curt nod of her head was the last thing he saw before she disappeared up the stairs and around a corner.
~ * ~
Drawers stood no chance against Jane’s mood. She pulled them open with such force that one of them pulled completely free and fell clanging to the floor, spilling its contents as it went. Well, that was certainly one way of removing her belongings. Of course, there was the entire dressing room full of things which would need to be pulled free and packed.
Perhaps she should do more of the same. It had felt rather good, after all.
Moving to an armoire in her closet, she threw the door open and reveled in the noise as it banged against the wall. It was a good sound. Loud and violent, and just a touch jarring. Suited her at the moment quite well.
“Miss, is there something I can help you find?” asked Meg, who had just rushed into the dressing room with wide eyes. “I am certain that if you only ask, I’ll know precisely where to find it, ma’am.” The young maid scurried about behind her, putting pieces of furniture back to their rightful positions and refolding articles of clothing she had strewn about willy-nilly in her tirade.
Ha! If only the maid could find where Jane had misplaced her mind when she’d agreed to her mother’s idea of sending her to Town for the Season. Then, perhaps, Jane might find a use for having a personal servant at her beck and call. Instead, now as ever, poor Meg was merely a nuisance. An aggravation. One more symbol of the inferiority of Jane’s birth, or at least the inferiority a certain duke-who-shall-remain-nameless insisted to be in existence.
And he, of course, was perfect. High-in-the-instep. Superior.
A perfectly superior pain in the arse might be a better fit.
Meg placed a stack of neatly folded clothes back into the drawer Jane had just painstakingly unpacked. All right. Fine. She could concede that there had been nothing painstaking about the process. But she had just removed the dratted articles in the first place, and if she wanted them in the drawer, she would have left them there in the first place.
Calm down. Breathe. Meg was simply attempting to do her job. She did not deserve the blistering retort Jane had so nearly delivered.
That retort belonged to no one but Meg’s employer.
“Meg, do be a dear and leave things as I have them, please.”
“Leave them, miss? I don’t understand.” She continued to fold and stack the clothes into perfect, neat little stacks.
“I mean I don’t want you to clean up after me. Please cease immediate
ly.” Before I rip them from your hands. Somehow, Jane kept that last little bit to herself. She prayed for patience. It simply wouldn’t do to attack the servant for the sins of her master—the bloody man who had the audacity to call her stupid.
She would show him. He could not order her about, no matter how much higher he ranked within the ton than she.
“I’m terribly sorry, ma’am, but I’m a bit confused.” Meg still held the shift she had been folding loosely in her hands, but at least she had stopped working for the moment. “Are you going somewhere? Might I help you to pack?”
There was a thought. “Yes, fine. Will you go and fetch a trunk, please?”
“Of course. But miss, where are you going? Her Grace sent me to help you dress for the evening—for the entertainment at Lady Kearsey’s house. Are you not going?”
“No. I’m not.” Not that it was any of Meg’s business. “Please see to fetching a trunk immediately.” The servant set the garment she was holding down and turned to do her bidding. “Oh, and Meg? Please don’t mention this to anyone. Not yet, at least.”
“No one, ma’am? But I’ll need a footman to carry a trunk up the stairs for me.”
Jane cringed at the headache building in her temples. Patience. Time to exercise patience. “No one but a single footman, then, and swear him to secrecy as well. Do please hurry.”
Once Meg finally scurried away, Jane had a moment to think. If only she’d made more progress toward opening her shop. That would at least give her somewhere to go, a way to earn at least a meager living. But she had yet to even find a solicitor to aid her in the process.
Granted, she had done a good deal to learn about her competition, and she had studied the stitchery in the gowns Miss Jenkins had made for her. That was some progress, though not nearly as much as she would have liked.
But she needed a storefront. She needed a place to set up her business, preferably with living quarters attached.
Where would she go now?
Where could she go?
Only one thing was certain—absolutely certain, beyond any shadow of a doubt. She wouldn’t stay one more night in the same home as His Grace, the haughty, repugnant tyrant who couldn’t lower himself enough to cease looking down his nose upon her.
A commotion sounded at the doorway to her chamber. Good. Meg and the footman must be bringing a trunk in so she could finish her packing and leave before someone tried to stop her. Jane hated to hurt Cousin Henrietta, and she dreaded no longer having the companionship of Sophie and Charlotte...but what could be done for it?
“Pardon me. Let me through, please.”
Oh dear. That was no footman. And it was definitely not Meg, either.
Drat.
Sophie burst through the door to Jane’s dressing room and planted her fists against her hips, wearing a lovely blue evening gown and with her hair out of sorts, as though she had gotten up in the middle of having her hair coiffed for the night. “What, pray tell, is the meaning of all of this?” She gestured with one hand toward the mess about the floor, then looked over her shoulder at the footman standing behind her, sheepishly carrying a single, rather large trunk.
Good gracious, she did not have time for all of this. She sent a glare in Meg’s direction, who refused to meet her eyes, then returned her attention to Sophie. “What does it look like?”
“It looks like you’re running away, and I, for one, will have none of it.” Sophie looked behind her at the two servants eagerly listening in to their conversation. “Leave us.”
“Yes, my lady.” They bobbed their bow and curtsy and slunk away, the footman taking the trunk with them.
“Whatever has gotten into you, Jane?” Sophie walked over to her, took one hand into her own, and pulled her down to a settee. “What on earth could have brought you to this?”
Jane studiously avoided meeting her eyes. “I don’t particularly care to discuss it at the moment.”
“Too bad. You’ll tell me now, and that’s all there is to it.” She frowned when Jane didn’t immediately respond. “It was Peter, wasn’t it? I just knew he was up to something when he was eavesdropping on us in the drawing room earlier. And then when he kept you behind…well, out with it.”
Jane merely shook her head. Sophie narrowed her eyes at her. Drat, she mustn’t be hiding the truth very well. “You will learn, if you haven’t already done so, that there can be no secrets kept from me. Not for long, at least.” Sophie lifted a single eyebrow and inclined her head in a tell-me-or-else sort of manner. “I have my ways.”
“Well, you’ll just have to use one of your ways, then. I’m not giving in so easily.”
“He kissed you.”
It sounded like an accusation. “What? Really...” Had Sophie somehow seen them that night in the garden? And she had thought they were discussing the conversation that occurred only moments ago in the drawing room.
“I knew it! He did kiss you.”
“No, no he didn’t kiss me.”
Sophie frowned. “He did so. Your eyes told me the truth, so it won’t do you any good to try to lie to me. I’ll see straight through you. He kissed you and you enjoyed it.”
Jane knit her brows together and gave her friend the fiercest frown she could muster. Then she got up and started to pull items from drawers and closets again. “You have the strangest ideas, Sophie. If your mother knew what we were discussing...”
“But she won’t know, will she? Besides, it’s perfectly clear that you not only enjoyed it when Peter kissed you, you want him to kiss you again. Plain as day on your face.”
“Humph.” Jane shook her head to herself. Since when was that the best retort she could manage? “Whether your brother kissed me or not is entirely irrelevant. I’m leaving.” The unmentionables in her hands were tangled into a knot, so she tossed them aside.
“Why?” Sophie shot back.
“What do you mean, ‘why’?”
“I mean why? Why are you leaving? Why are you running away from him?” She stood and began to replace all of Jane’s belongings in their proper drawers and cabinets, utterly ignoring the severe scowl Jane gave her for doing so.
“Would you please stop that?” Jane asked in an almost commanding tone as she pulled her garments free from Sophie’s grasp.
“No. Answer me.” The infuriating woman picked up another stack and tossed it into the armoire before slamming the door shut.
“Answer what?” Jane threw the door open and pulled the stack out again, tossing it onto the floor alongside the majority of the destructed dressing room’s contents. “I’ll answer you when you ask me a reasonable question and not a moment before.”
“And I’ll ask you a reasonable question when you behave like a reasonable person! You, my friend, are no coward. You proved that this afternoon. Why on earth are you behaving like one now?”
“I’m not. You’re behaving like a shrew, poking your nose into my business.” Jane pulled another stack of clothes from Sophie’s hands, sending most of them falling to the floor—other than the dress that each of them had a hand fully grasping. “Let go.”
“No. Tell me why you’re running from my brother, when it is perfectly clear that you are madly in love with him.” She tugged at the dress, pulling Jane closer to her.
Ha! In love with that rude, overbearing, condescending boor? Never.
“I most certainly am not,” she said and returned the tug. “Unhand my dress. You’ll ruin it.”
“You can fix it later. We all know you’re more than capable of that, even if you are incapable of giving an answer to a simple question.”
“Why on earth would you possibly think I’m in love with him? I’ve never heard anything more ludicrous in my entire life.”
“Then why are you nearly in tears? You love him, and you cannot stand it.”
“I’m not about to cry,” she said before she felt the sting of hot tears pouring down her cheeks. “Oh, drat!”
“I told you.”
“You
are most definitely not helping anything at the moment, Sophie.” Could she possibly love him? Impossible. He constantly insisted on putting her in her place, he tried to intimidate her at every turn—and he hated Mr. Cuddlesworth! She could think of no man she wanted to love less than the Duke of Somerton.
No, it was out of the question. She was simply so...so...so mad at the man. Nothing more.
“Nevertheless, you are crying, and it is clearly about Peter. So what is it?” Again, Sophie led her to the settee to sit—but only after shoving piles of tossed about clothing off of it. “Tell me. Why are you leaving?”
“Because he’s horrible to me. He called me stupid today, and I will not—ever—be called stupid. Not by any man. I won’t stand for it, for the way he speaks down to me, the way he does everything possible to even avoid looking at me. It’s simply more than I can bear.”
“He would never intend to hurt you. I can promise you that.” Sophie patted the back of her hand, calming and soothing. “Surely he’s just unaware of his behavior. He’s always doing things that seem to contradict what he really feels and wants. Terrible habit, that.” Her eyes took on an almost wistful gaze, staring off into nothing.
“You only think that of him because he is your brother.”
“Well—as you said, he is my brother. I love him. And because I love him and have known him my entire life, I can assure you that he’s not truly a horrible man. Not at all. He loves his family and works very hard to keep us all happy and comfortable. Perhaps he is simply—a bit naïve about how he is making you feel?”
“That’s no excuse,” Jane mumbled, then sniffled and used a random garment to dry her tears.
“No. But it’s also no reason to run away. Besides, whatever would you do? You are a single woman in London. There are only so many options, my dear, and none of them are acceptable.”
“One of them is,” she muttered beneath her breath.
Again Sophie’s eyes narrowed into her shrewd, entirely too perceptive gaze. “What did you say?”
A Lord Rotheby's Holiday Bundle Page 74
