His Reluctant Lady

by Aydra Richards

  “Lady Winifred would skewer me if I did not,” Poppy said automatically, and then flushed in horror. But both the duchess and Lady Ravenhurst laughed uproariously, delighted with her brutal honesty.

  “I think I shall come along as well,” Lady Ravenhurst said, her eyes glinting with merriment. “We ought to go back inside—Robert will miss me for the next set.” And then, “Oh, I nearly forgot.” She plucked her reticule off her wrist, and withdrew a folded packet of papers, which Jilly grabbed for eagerly.

  “Thank you,” Jilly exclaimed. “I’ve been so mired in preparations for the ball that I hadn’t the time to go purchase it myself.”

  “Mrs. Waring has outdone herself this time,” Lady Ravenhurst said. “You’ll be shocked—shocked.” But the expression on her face was gleeful, as if she was struck with giddy anticipation.

  Poppy had heard her writing discussed before, but she’d never felt the wild rush of pleasure that assailed her at the knowledge that these two ladies had read, and so clearly enjoyed, her work.

  “Do you enjoy Gothic novels?” Jilly asked as she snagged Poppy’s arm once again, tucking the sheaf of papers into her reticule.

  “Oh, I—well, I—” There didn’t seem to be a safe response to it, and for the first time since she’d begun her career, the temptation to claim her authorship rose to her tongue, and she barely bit back the words.

  “Never mind,” Jilly said, patting her arm. “You will adore these. Everyone does. I’ll loan you my copies. They can be a trifle salacious,” she allowed, with an assessing look at Poppy, as if she were attempting to divine whether or not Poppy was a prudish as her appearance would suggest.

  Poppy felt a deepening blush sliding into her cheeks and prayed the cool night air would wick it away before they reached the ballroom. What would the duchess say if she only knew that she was speaking to the author of the aforementioned salacious works?

  But she could never tell. It would be mean ruining herself, ruining any chances that Victoria and Isobel had to make advantageous marriages. How strange to think that she, who had never had the slightest problem keeping her secret before, could so suddenly find herself wanting to share it.

  Possibly it was just that the duchess had been kind to her. Poppy had never expected to find friendship in London, much less that someone so far above her own station would ever deign to offer it. Even though Papa had been a viscount, the title had been a fairly recent creation, as far as titles went, and he had never been a man of any great fortune. And with Papa gone and Cousin Rupert in possession of the title, their connections to nobility were now tenuous at best—it was highly doubtful that Cousin Rupert would even care to acknowledge them if he encountered them.

  But the duchess—Jilly, at her own insistence—didn’t seem to care about any of that. Perhaps it was because of Poppy’s relative unfamiliarity with London society that the duchess had approached her. Perhaps she, like Poppy, understood what it was to live on the fringes of acceptance.

  “Have you any idea why my brother has taken an interest in you?” Jilly asked as they approached the terrace doors.

  An interest? Poppy resisted the urge to pat her hot cheeks as the memory of The Kiss crossed her mind once more. “No,” she said, hearing the hollow, tinny ring of her own voice and how very much it sounded like the lie it was. “I can’t imagine,” she continued, “I’m afraid you may have mistaken it. I’m hardly the sort of woman that would catch the interest of anyone.”

  Lady Ravenhurst snorted, an inelegant, unladylike sound that would have shocked Lady Winifred to the roots of her hair. “With very little effort, you could be,” she said. “But let that be our concern, Miss Fairchild. Until tomorrow.” With a brief pat to Poppy’s elbow, she crossed the threshold and disappeared into the thick of the crowd.

  Jilly turned, collecting Poppy’s hands in hers and squeezing them fondly. “I enjoyed our talk. Nora and I will come visiting around two or so, if you have no objections,” she said with a smile so bright and dazzling that Poppy very nearly took a step back.

  Poppy had plenty of objections, but she suspected that few people refused the duchess, and that a spine of steel lurked beneath the glittering, genial exterior the duchess showed the world—any objections she might’ve voiced would have been waved away as nothing.

  At last the duchess took her leave, and Poppy was left reeling, as if she had been dragged behind a runaway carriage. She returned to her empty seat beside Lady Winifred, who snapped open her fan and waved it briskly, using the cover of it to whisper to Poppy surreptitiously.

  “I hope you did not offend Her Grace,” Lady Winifred said, though her voice conveyed doubt.

  Poppy had had the impression that she couldn’t have offended the duchess had she given it an honest effort, but that was hardly something she could say to Lady Winifred, who would have been properly horrified.

  But neither was she inclined to share the duchess’ intention to visit, as the mere prospect would have sent Lady Winifred into paroxysms of delight—along with an endless recitation of every rule of comportment that she would expect Poppy to adhere to. Until such a time as the duchess actually paid a call—and Poppy knew enough about London society to understand that the nobility often said things they did not mean—there was no point in agonizing over it.

  Instead she murmured something noncommittal, and endured Lady Winifred’s prying questions with the same bland evasiveness, counting down the minutes until at last the ball would let out.

  Chapter Ten

  David watched the last of the attendees file out with a vague sense of disappointment. At least Lady Nettringham seemed to have surrendered her fury, and he suspected she had taken him at his word—that her reputation was safe provided she did not call attention to the novelist’s trespass against them—and perhaps she had taken David at his word, that he would flush out and deal with the villain himself.

  He had spent the majority of the ball cooped up in the library just a few doors down from the retiring room in the hopes of luring out the spy. He thought he’d done a rather excellent job of making his exit from the ballroom obvious enough to be tempting to the culprit, but hours had flown by without the slightest hint of an intruder. He had consoled himself in his failure with a glass of whisky and grown reckless enough to make the occasional noise, just in case his presence had been overlooked, but if the spy had been in attendance, he or she had not gone seeking him out.

  And he had waited in silence, sinking further and further into his cups. His preoccupation with catching the offending author had faded into the recesses of his mind, and Miss Fairchild—Poppy—had risen, unbidden, to the forefront of it.

  It had just been the whisky. It had probably just been the whisky.

  But as his hope for a quick resolution to his little dilemma had faded, he had found his mind wandering—hoping that perhaps Poppy would come to him instead. Poppy, with her prim little mouth that could be coaxed into sweet surrender, and her terrible, prudish gowns that hid her lush figure from the world. She was a secret that only he had learned, and the vague sense of possessiveness that struck him at the merest thought of her was...disquieting.

  She was far from his usual sort of woman. She wasn’t dainty or delicate. She did not smile serenely, or flutter her lashes, or coo flattery. She wasn’t blond or petite, and he doubted that she owned a single gown that would display her bosom to its best advantage, or that she would dampen her skirts so they would cling to her legs.

  She looked like somebody’s maiden aunt, and still he was tempted toward indiscretion. It beggared belief. There was not enough whisky in the whole of the country to blunt his strange attraction to her.

  “David? I thought you had left already.”

  He turned, the glass of whisky halfway to his lips. Jilly had appeared off to his right, looking at once pleased and exhausted. Though her wild copper curls had been tamed into a sedate style earlier in the evening, the heat of the ballroom and the flurry of activity had taken t
heir toll, and a few of them had escaped her pins. Her rose-hued gown, too, was a bit more disheveled than he would have expected to come of a night of dancing, and he supposed he could not discount the possibility that her husband had dragged her off to some secluded corner for a bit of fun. They were rather disgustingly—and unfashionably—in love. It was enough to turn one’s stomach.

  For the first time since the beginning of the evening, he thought of Elaine. He couldn’t imagine luring her off for a tryst in the middle of a ball, and he doubted she would have allowed it. Disheveling her perfectly arranged golden curls would doubtless have been treated as a grievous offense, and he couldn’t imagine her suffering wrinkles in her immaculately starched and pressed gowns with anything but the highest levels of disdain.

  Would Poppy be amenable to such an indiscretion? An uncomfortable and intrusive thought; he downed the last of his whisky and shoved it from his mind.

  “No such luck,” David said. “I’ve been in the library.”

  “Ah,” Jilly said, a flash of sympathy crossing her face. “Perhaps I was insensitive, inviting Lady Elaine and Leighton.” But it would have been a very clear slight had she left them off, and it would have given rise to even more gossip.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “They didn’t bother me.” It was mostly true. He was less stung by the sight of them together than he had been only weeks ago. It was only the sense of loss, of having been judged the lesser in comparison to Leighton that continued to rankle.

  “Hmm,” Jilly said noncommittally, creeping forward to stand beside him. “I spoke with your Miss Fairchild this evening.”

  His Miss Fairchild. It was the whisky, surely, that had caused that odd feeling of possessiveness, of primal satisfaction. His Poppy—and no one else’s. What an utterly bizarre thought. He ought to disabuse Jilly of the notion straight off; she had turned into one of those wretched people who thought that, having achieved blissful happiness in marriage, that everyone ought to be so matched. It was revolting.

  Instead he heard himself say, “Oh?”

  “I quite liked her,” she said. “She seems a sensible woman. Not at all your usual type.”

  He wondered if he had imagined the faint censorious tone, and decided that he had not. Jilly had almost certainly not approved of Elaine for him, and even he had to admit that very few of the women he had conducted liaisons with would have had much to recommend them in Jilly’s eyes. Not that he would be moved to court a woman simply because his baby sister approved of her—but she was not wrong in her judgment that Miss Fairchild was indeed quite a departure from the women he generally preferred.

  “I don’t know why her father failed to bring her out years ago,” Jilly said, “but she’s determined that her sisters ought to have their own Seasons at least. Really, it’s quite admirable. She’s still a young woman—only twenty-six. But I think she’s quite given up the hope of finding a husband of her own.” She gave a despairing sigh.

  “Well, she certainly won’t if she sits with the dowagers and insists on dressing like one of them.” That untoward skirl of satisfaction again—no man would give her a second glance as she was. Only he had any idea of what lurked beneath the placid face she donned in public, the dowdy gowns she wore like armor. An undiscovered gem of hidden potential that he alone had unearthed.

  “That was unkind,” Jilly said severely. “But, sadly true—which is why Nora and I will call upon her tomorrow.”

  David choked. “Never tell me you intend to make a project of her.”

  “Project sounds so distasteful,” Jilly said. “She’s a lovely woman. It’s clear that she’s sacrificed a great deal of her youth in holding her family together. She deserves the same opportunity she’s providing her sisters.” She gave a resolute nod, then added, “We’ll take her to see Madame Moreau.”

  David closed his eyes against the sudden vision that swam before them—Poppy in one of the sinful creations that Madame Moreau was so famous for. Heaven help him.

  “For God’s sake,” he snapped, “let the poor woman dress as she pleases.” The very last thing he needed was to be confronted with Poppy’s bosom, alarmingly bared in one of those indecent dresses that were all the rage amongst the ladies of the Ton.

  “David, she’s new to London. She’s been rusticating in Bath until fairly recently. She hasn’t got the faintest idea of where to find a suitable ball gown.” Jilly patted absently at her hair, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. “She needs someone to guide her. Don’t you think she would look lovely in a proper gown?”

  David suspected she would look dangerous in a proper gown. Something strange and feral within him balked at the thought of watching any number of randy young bucks discover her, to finally notice the charms that until now only he had learned of. It was an odd feeling, and one he did not intend to explore any further.

  “Hell,” he said, his voice grittier than he would have liked. “Do as you please, then, but don’t solicit my opinion, I beg you.” He discarded his empty glass upon a table and stormed off, entirely missing the delighted smile that she cast at his retreating back.

  ∞∞∞

  Noon had sailed by unheeded as Poppy sat at her writing desk and scribbled away. She was aware, vaguely, that breakfast had long since passed, and that eventually she would be driven by hunger to search out something to eat in the kitchen, but she was loath to surrender the progress she had gained to something so mundane as eating.

  Isobel had popped her head into Poppy’s room only once, and had gotten a balled-up stocking lobbed at her head for her troubles. The girls knew that Poppy did not appreciate being disturbed while she was writing, and they were liable to find the nearest object within reach chucked at them if they dared—but Lady Winifred did not know that, and when she burst into the room fifteen minutes after two, Poppy had to restrain herself from tossing the inkwell on her desk at the woman.

  “The Duchess of Rushton is in the drawing room!” Lady Winifred shrilled, her grey hair quivering with indignity. “She said she was expected—that she had told you of her intention to call last evening!” She speared Poppy with a glare, her watery blue eyes cold as ice. “There was nothing at all to serve, of course. Cook is in a state!”

  For a moment it was all Poppy could do to stare blankly, striving to make sense of the strident noise issuing forth from Lady Winifred’s tautly-pursed lips. “The duchess?” she repeated, forming the word without comprehending it.

  “Of Rushton,” Lady Winifred snapped.

  “Is here?”

  “In the drawing room!” This was followed by a virulent hiss of disdain. “What has gotten into you? She’s expecting you, and you’re not even properly attired!” She craned her neck to get a glance at Poppy’s papers. “What are you doing?”

  That was enough to shake Poppy from her writing fugue. She jerked into motion, collecting her work and tapping it into order with shaking fingers. “Nothing,” she said, as a blithely as she could manage. “Just some correspondence.” She swept the neat stack into her desk drawer and shut it just a bit too roughly.

  With a roll of her eyes—an action she would have chided Poppy or the twins for—Lady Winifred heaved a long-suffering sigh and said, “Do hurry. You cannot keep a duchess waiting!” She swept out of the room, muttering something—clearly unflattering—beneath her breath.

  “I didn’t think the duchess was in earnest,” Poppy said belatedly, to the empty room. She glanced down at her grey gown and sighed. Doubtless none of her gowns would meet with Lady Winifred’s approval for a duchess’ exalted presence, and so there was no sense in changing into a fresh one. But her fingers were still stained with ink, and she could at least do something about that. She retreated to the wash basin and scrubbed at her hands as best she could with soap and water, until she’d exorcised as much of the ink from her skin as was possible—though her fingertips maintained a blotchy grey hue.

  Nothing a set of gloves couldn’t mask. She pulled on an old pair of wh
at had once been ivory kid gloves, but had since become slightly tinged with yellow. She tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter what Lady Winifred thought, that these were all the garments she had and that there was no use trying to turn herself out like any other London lady would be. Still, the pall of Lady Winifred’s disapproval hung heavily on her shoulders.

  Her stomach gave a little gurgle, reminding her that she’d had nothing to eat this morning, and afternoon had already well advanced. She hoped that the cook would manage to whip up a batch of tea cakes, at least, as it seemed that her plans to sneak something from the kitchen would now come to naught.

  She descended the stairs with a sort of grim resignation. Between the duchess, who had threatened her with a new wardrobe, and Lady Winifred, who would surely be keeping a watchful eye upon her, the better to mark each and every faux pas she committed for later castigation, she was not entirely sure who constituted the greater danger.

  Voices rose to meet her as she arrived on the ground floor. There was the clink of china, suggesting that tea, at least, had been prepared. Her stomach gave another betraying gurgle, and she pressed her palm over it. She could not imagine what Lady Winifred would have to say if she proved herself uncouth enough to make such noises in the presence of a duchess, but it would certainly be a lecture such as she’d never received before.

  Three heads popped up as she entered the drawing room. Lady Winifred fixed her with a severe frown, but the duchess and Lady Ravenhurst both summoned smiles, and neither one seemed even the tiniest bit put out over being kept waiting.

  Poppy bobbed an awkward curtsey. Her knees popped, and Lady Winifred’s frown deepened at the audible sound, as if Poppy was meant to control that, too. “Your Grace,” Poppy said. “My lady. Please forgive my tardiness.”