The Duke Is a Devil

by Karen Lingefelt

  But he wasn’t entirely convinced that she was in love, only at her last prayers.

  “Mr. Eastman, I wonder if you’re familiar with the old saying that a faint heart never won a fair lady? It might even be in the Book of Proverbs. Seems like a good place for it.”

  Eastman suddenly looked—well, faint of heart. “Then you won’t speak to Lord Willard?”

  “I think it would be in your best interests to speak to him yourself, before I must intervene on your behalf. Who knows? You could be pleasantly surprised. My uncle may readily give his blessing, if only because it would save him the expense of another sojourn to London. Indeed, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it’s really only his wife who wants to make a grand match for her daughter. Has Miss Armstrong expressed to you any desire to return to London?”

  “Not at all, Your Grace. She’s made it clear she’s only doing this for her mother.”

  Dane nodded. “Call on Lord Willard at your next convenience. Let me know what he says, and we shall go from there.” With any luck, Willard would acquiesce. Or Mr. Eastman would go home this afternoon and fall in love with his housekeeper as quickly and easily as he fell for Rebecca. Maybe Rebecca would elope with her father’s coachman. Maybe that coachman was really another duke in disguise, and that would more than placate everyone.

  Everyone, perhaps, except Miss Logan. What would become of her then? Dane still felt some sense of responsibility toward her.

  After Mr. Eastman departed, Dane went to his library where he found on his desk a letter with Willard’s seal on the flap. He sighed in exasperation.

  “What now?” he grumbled aloud, as he broke the seal and opened the letter. “This had better not have anything to do with that other letter.”

  This one was much shorter, and in different handwriting from the previous letter. The penmanship was graceful and legible, in the hand of a lady who’d had a great deal of practice at wielding a pen.

  Dear Duke of Bradbury,

  Thank you again for coming to my rescue last week, and please accept my most abject apologies for the trouble I caused. I would also like to apologize for breaking my promise to you of sixteen years ago, when I gave you my word that I would never trouble you again. Please be assured that this time, I sincerely mean it.

  I deserve neither your forgiveness, nor any favor from you.

  Yours, &c,

  Cecily Logan

  Dane almost crumpled the letter in disgust, not at Cecily but at her relatives. And himself.

  He didn’t doubt that was her true signature, and that she wrote the bloody thing. He also didn’t doubt that their uncle stood over her while she did it, and even dictated it to her. And while he might have doubted that Willard held a pistol to her head the whole time, it still would have come as no surprise if he’d done so.

  This was the letter Willard had been referring to after church this morning! The very letter that Dane had declared a piece of rubbish the likes of which he did not want to see ever again and had duly reduced to ashes.

  How would Miss Logan react once Willard informed her of that?

  Dane stomped over to the bell pull and yanked on it so hard, the damned thing tore loose. He cracked it like a whip, only not being a whip it didn’t crack, but fluttered feebly against the edge of his desk. He bellowed, “OSBERT! LIBRARY!”

  If only he was a god instead of a devil, lightning would flash and thunder would crash, splitting the roof wide open in divine wrath, while the floor would open beneath and swallow everyone and everything into a fiery pit where he’d ostensibly have more power over things.

  Some days, he truly felt as if he were an even lesser mortal than the ones he’d been jilted for over the years. This was one of those days.

  Osbert appeared in the open doorway. “Your Grace?”

  “The bell pull is broken.” He snatched up the letter. “And when, exactly, was this letter with Lord Willard’s seal delivered?”

  Osbert didn’t even blink. “Right after you departed for church, Your Grace. His Lordship’s scullery maid delivered it.”

  “Very well.” Dane handed him the broken bell pull. “That will be all.”

  He stood at the window, reading the missive again, studying each word. I would also like to apologize for breaking my promise to you of sixteen years ago, when I gave you my word that I would never trouble you again.

  Sixteen years ago? Then she was referring to when he’d rescued her from the old abandoned treehouse he and his brothers used to play in. The next day, he’d received a letter from her quite similar to this one. She couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years old at the time. She’d been distressed to the point of tears, and Dane had tried to make her feel better by laughing at the whole thing, thereby making a jolly lark of it. He’d almost had her feeling the same way...until he delivered her to her uncle and aunt, neither of whom could find anything the least bit droll about it, for all his efforts at levity.

  But a devil couldn’t make anyone laugh. A devil never brought happiness to anyone. A devil could only cause grief and anger.

  Dane had caused her nothing but grief and anger over the years. Small wonder she’d written that book about him and titled it The Duke Is a Devil, even if it did have a happy ending.

  But being a devil, he was damned if he knew how to rectify this latest misunderstanding without getting her into even more trouble.

  He knew of only one thing to do, and it was right there in the book.

  He’d have to marry her.

  The happy ending.

  He could go over to the dower house right now and—then the lightning flashed in the sky which, since he came home from church, was now an ominous slate gray from those clouds he’d seen over the eastern horizon earlier. Now the thunder crashed. But neither the roof nor the floor opened up above him or below him, however much he might wish he could be swallowed up into that fiery pit where he belonged.

  The heavens opened up and poured. His coachman was already out there, taking Mr. Eastman back to the vicarage. Dane couldn’t ask him to go out again in this weather.

  He liked to think he wasn’t that much of a devil.

  Chapter Seven

  Cecily had to admit that there were worse things than being stuck at Tyndall Abbey in Derbyshire with no one for company but the dowager Lady Tyndall, a plump matron who happened to be the aunt of the current earl.

  Alas, Lady Tyndall thought otherwise. “I’m telling you, I don’t need a companion. For most of the year, I have the company of the new Countess of Tyndall, and sometimes my daughter comes to visit with her husband. I don’t mind being alone while everyone else is in London. Besides, I only have a small widow’s portion. I can’t possibly afford to pay you regular wages, Miss Logan. Indeed, if it weren’t for the beneficence of the new Lord and Lady Tyndall, and my other nephew the Duke of Halstead, I should be in straits as dire as yours.”

  “You needn’t pay her a wage,” Lord Willard said sharply. “Pray, what would she spend it on, here in the midst of the Peak, where there is no society? As it is, she’s always spent what little pin money she has on paper and ink.”

  “Paper and ink? Whatever for?” Lady Tyndall looked Cecily up and down as if trying to ascertain how she might accessorize her wardrobe with such frivolous fripperies.

  “Exactly. The point is, we cannot take her with us to London, but we could not leave her alone near Bradbury Park, either, where she might cause more trouble for the duke.”

  “But you will be coming back at the end of the Little Season, will you not? Or do you intend to stay in Town for the winter?”

  “Sooner or later, we will surely return this way in need of a place to spend the night,” he promptly replied.

  “Then you will be taking her back to Yorkshire, will you not?”

  This time the reply was not so prompt. But after a second, he did say, “Of course.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “It seems to me you had to think about that for a moment.”

/>   “Not at all. I was merely dumbstruck at the notion that you would ask such a thing. As if you think we mean to abandon our niece here as if she were an old dog we no longer wanted. Who knows? By the time we do come this way again, you may decide you like her company and have no wish to see her leave. And who knows? When your other nephew, the young Lord Tyndall, and his countess return here, they may wish to keep her on as a governess for their infant son. And who also knows? Our niece may find another—”

  “Oh, do be gone with you!” Lady Tyndall exclaimed, flicking both hands at him.

  Moments later, the Armstrong carriage rolled away from Tyndall Abbey, carrying Lord Willard, his wife, and youngest daughter to London.

  Cecily stood on the front steps watching them until they were out of sight. Lady Tyndall had long since returned indoors. Cecily’s ankle was doing much better now, so she walked without the slightest limp as she made her way to the drawing room, where Lady Tyndall was already seated in a chair by the fireplace, for the day was gloomy and chilly.

  “This is a very large house,” Lady Tyndall said, without even looking up at Cecily. “Therefore, we need not ever see each other. We don’t even need to take meals together. This used to be an abbey until the sixteenth century, so there are two dining rooms—one for all the monks or nuns, and one for the abbot or abbess. Not to mention all the chambers set aside for travelers looking for somewhere to lodge for one night on their way to other abbeys.”

  “Then you don’t really need a p—” Cecily was about to say paid, but caught herself in time, “—a lady’s companion?”

  Lady Tyndall still didn’t look up from her embroidery. “I have a daughter and I have a niece. Both of them caused me nothing but heartache. Imagine the grief I’m likely to suffer in the company of a young woman who isn’t even a relation. Do leave me be. I’m sure you’ll find paper and ink in the earl’s library, so you may occupy yourself writing as many letters as you please. You might even try your hand at writing a book, like that woman who wrote the one about the five daughters all in want of husbands though none are in possession of a great dowry.”

  “Or any dowry, for that matter,” Cecily remarked.

  Still not looking up, Lady Tyndall flicked a hand as if Cecily were a fly that managed to buzz into the house while the front door was open. “Do run along, already. Upon my word, I would have remained in the dower cottage had I suspected this abbey would be used as a coaching inn for every person of my family’s acquaintance traveling back and forth between the Borders and London. I do not wish to know you are here.”

  Cecily found the library across the front hall from the drawing room. She sat down at the desk, and with paper and ink did what she could not do in person, what it seemed she could only do in writing.

  She wrote a letter to the Duke of Bradbury, confessing to him that she was the author of That Book, expressing surprise that he hadn’t figured it out already, reasserting that she did not want it published, and that she had no intention of blackmailing him. She’d written it strictly for her own diversion, never to be seen by anyone but her own self. Moreover, it wasn’t really about Bradbury, strictly speaking. She’d fictionalized gossip as she’d heard it, changed a few details, and added a few embellishments so as to put her own personal stamp on it. She added that she knew he’d been betrothed several times already and that all the fiancées had jilted him, which raised the question that drove the plot: Why would all those fiancées jilt him if there wasn’t something wrong with him? Frankly, she didn’t think there was anything wrong with Bradbury; only with Madfury, and the answer, in her opinion, was nothing more scandalous than the fact that only his true love would never jilt him—if she were brave enough to seek him out in his secluded castle.

  She hit a block as she debated with herself whether to tell him what really bothered her about other people reading the book. That readers would equate Madfury with Bradbury was a foregone conclusion. But would they equate the book’s heroine with its author? Would they conclude, as Harry already had (to her everlasting horror), that Cecily fancied herself Bradbury’s true love?

  She might well become the laughingstock of the ton. But worse, Bradbury himself might laugh at the idea—or rage that she presumed and even schemed to trap him into marriage.

  She left the letter unfinished for now. She hadn’t even decided whether she would actually send it to him. Perhaps it would be better if no one, not even he, knew she was the author, unless Harry opened his big mouth. Still, she felt better about getting her thoughts and troubles down on paper. She read what she’d already written, and crossed out the part where she expressed surprise that he hadn’t figured out the author’s identity, as if she believed His Grace to be a slow-witted imbecile. Alas, this meant she’d have to rewrite the entire page. She didn’t want to provoke his anger any more than she might have already. She still stung from Uncle Willard’s news that Bradbury had burned the letter of apology she’d been forced to write, and of his declaration that he hoped never to see such a thing from her ever again.

  “That means you’d better not impose on him ever again!” Uncle Willard had snapped.

  Of course, it was entirely possible that Uncle Willard wasn’t telling the truth about the duke’s reaction to her apology. But it offered the perfect excuse for her uncle and aunt to dump her in the middle of Derbyshire with the first dowager they encountered on their journey south—but only after taking advantage of her hospitality, such as it was, for the night.

  Being midday, Cecily rang for a plate of sandwiches and searched the library for something to read. She was delighted to find a copy of one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s gothic romances. The flyleaf indicated it belonged to the sister of the young Earl of Tyndall, Evangeline Benedict, who was now married to Bradbury’s younger brother and thus known as Lady Gareth Armstrong. In Cecily’s scandalous book, Evangeline Benedict had been a completely different person known only as Lady Bernice, who secretly loved Madfury’s missing brother and betrothed herself to Madfury in hopes of finding that brother, which she did. He’d been locked in Madfury’s dungeon all that time to prevent him from usurping Madfury’s title.

  Cecily spent the rest of the afternoon absorbed in The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, reading it in one sitting. She loved Mrs. Radcliffe’s works, and wished she could write like her.

  She nearly dropped the book at the sound of thumping and shouting from the nearby front hall. That shouting voice was eerily familiar.

  It couldn’t be him. She put down the book and tiptoed to the closed door, even as she wondered why she was tiptoeing. Even if she walked normally, who could have heard her footsteps behind the closed door, and over all that din on the other side?

  She froze as she heard the butler announce the Duke of Bradbury to Lady Tyndall.

  He was here! Her heart leaped, and she didn’t know how to tamp it back down. Surely he was here only for the night en route to London. It was too much to hope he’d take her with him in the morning without a chaperone.

  But Cecily could dream, couldn’t she?

  “Your Grace!” Lady Tyndall trilled. “Oh, Your Grace!”

  “I heard you the first time, my dear Cordelia. That is—if I may call you that?”

  “Oh! Your Grace! Why, you may call me whatever you wish! Oh!”

  “Call her mad,” Cecily murmured.

  “You’re not going to swoon, are you?” he asked. “Matrons always swoon whenever they see me, especially at Tyndall Abbey. Last time I was here, ’twas Lady Milner—and you know what happened after that, Cordelia.”

  Cecily knew what happened after that, for she’d heard the story from an outraged Aunt Thea, who’d heard it from none other than the dowager Lady Tyndall while visiting here on a previous journey from London two years ago. She’d even incorporated it into The Duke Is a Devil, with the requisite embellishments. Everyone in the ton already knew about it, of course.

  “Oh, you wicked duke!” Lady Tyndall cried. “Does that mean you intend t
o make me your next scandalous bride?”

  Cecily rolled her eyes.

  “What about your daughter? Is she not already married?”

  “She is, indeed, Your Grace. Lydia is married to the Earl of Renton.”

  “A countess like yourself? Then what about your niece? Oh, but she’s married, too, is she not? She’s now a viscountess?”

  “Not yet, Your Grace. Felicity is married to the nephew and heir of Viscount Lockwood.”

  “Then I take it there are no ladies in this house younger than you, Cordelia? No one who might fit the glass slipper in my pocket?”

  Cecily couldn’t help sighing at that that. Cinderella was her favorite fairy tale.

  “Your Grace!” Lady Tyndall exclaimed. “Are you suggesting I might have a younger lady locked in the tower?” Being a former abbey, there was a bell tower on one corner of the house, but no bell.

  “If you don’t, then I suppose I shall have to settle for you, Cordelia—but only until you decide to throw me over for someone else.”

  “Never! Oooh!”

  Cecily heard a scuffle.

  “Who has smelling salts?” Bradbury asked.

  “Don’t tell me that old cow actually fainted in his arms,” Cecily muttered.

  The butler said, “Her new companion might. Indeed, she should, being a companion.”

  “She has a companion? Then where is she?”

  Cecily threw open the library door. “Not locked in the bell tower.”

  Bradbury, standing in the middle of the front hall with a presumably unconscious Lady Tyndall in his arms, looked as if he were about to drop the dowager countess as he gaped back at Cecily. “Miss Logan! Fancy seeing you here. You are now her companion?”