Duchesses in Disguise

by Grace Burrowes

  What would she have done?

  He gazed up and down the street. The railing had ended, and every storefront was different. No consistency. People crowded the walks, and coaches and wagons clogged the streets. All the clean lines were blurred.

  “What do we do now?” Little Jonas asked, distressed.

  “We remain calm and think. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, sir.” Little Jonas put on a stoic face, but his lips trembled.

  Stratton headed north until they came to three streets flowing together, all the traffic merging into a knot of noise, carriages, horses, and people. No, she would not have passed this way. He swung around and headed in the opposite direction.

  Now his heart thundered. She could have easily taken this road straight into the notorious St. Giles rookery. He hoped he was wrong about her direction and that she had headed to Hyde Park, and that some of Mary Alice’s servants had found her there.

  Stratton asked shopkeepers lounging outside their doors if they had seen a girl of Anna’s description. He received negative replies until, at last, a wine merchant reported that such a girl had tripped a man delivering barrels of wine half an hour earlier. The merchant said the rude girl kept walking, not paying attention to the merchant’s wife, who’d demanded an apology.

  Stratton and Jonas quickened their pace to a jog. They passed the outskirts of wealthy west London and moved closer to the heart of the old city, where the neighborhood rapidly degraded. Rotting buildings and grimy gutters lined the road. The place reeked of human and animal urine and feces. Derelicts were slumped on the walks and against storefronts.

  “Stay close to me, Little Jonas,” he ordered.

  “D-do you think Anna went in there?” Stratton could hear the fear in the boy’s voice.

  “God, I hope not.” Stratton studied the chaotic scene. Ragmen and vendors, shouting out their filthy wares, clogged the road and walks. “No, she couldn’t see the lines anymore. She wouldn’t have come here.”

  Stratton rubbed his temples and tried to tamp down his own panic. Where was this child? “Let’s turn back,” he advised.

  “But you said—”

  “I know what I said, but I was wrong. Sometimes people are wrong.”

  Tears welled in Little Jonas’s eyes. His brave façade was breaking apart. “Will someone hurt Anna?”

  “No!” Stratton lied, because admitting that he didn’t know would only further terrify the child.

  Stratton turned and jogged up the street again, this time on the opposite walk. He passed a meandering lane that cut through the streets. He'd noticed the lane before but had decided the broken wheelbarrow upturned at the entrance would have discouraged Anna. This time he stopped. A cold prickle crawled up his back. He took several steps toward the alley and noticed something he had missed the first time. Between the buildings, rising on either side of the narrow footpath, he could make out the spire of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

  “This way!” Stratton gestured to Little Jonas. Stratton ran as fast as he could, still keeping the boy close behind him. The narrow lane curved and wound around buildings and small squares. All the while, the cathedral spire remained in sight. Stratton apologized to people he accidentally brushed against or alarmed as he hurried past.

  Then he began to hear them. Screams!

  “That’s Anna!” Little Jonas shouted.

  Stratton and Little Jonas rushed into a small crowd. The people formed a semicircle around Anna. She was curled on the ground beside a brick wall, screaming and pounding the pavers with her hands. A kindly old woman tried to comfort the flailing girl, but every time she touched the child, she only stoked Anna’s hysterics.

  “This is my daughter,” Stratton boomed. “She becomes panic-stricken in crowds. I’m here now and will return her safely home. Please continue with your day. I will take care of matters.”

  He knelt beside the hysterical girl, careful not to touch her. “I assure you that she will be fine,” he told the crowd, which was reluctant to leave.

  “She’s my sister,” Little Jonas shouted. “And I’m a duke. I order you to leave us.”

  “Please.” Stratton tried to soften the boy’s foolish words. “If we give the child some quiet, she will calm down. Thank you for your concern and assistance.”

  Slowly, the crowd dispersed, glancing back worriedly as they ambled away.

  “Anna,” Little Jonas said. “It’s me, your brother. Why did you run away?”

  Anna screamed and struck the brick wall with her bloodied fist.

  Stratton rested his finger on his lips, hushing Little Jonas.

  He and the boy sat in silence, guarding Anna as her fit played out. Slowly, her internal storm subsided until she lay limp, her cheek on the ground, her small chest rising and falling with her slowing breaths. Stratton removed the pin on his cravat—a simple gold circle—and held it before Anna. He watched as her eyes focused on the pin. He slowly turned it, letting the light reflecting off the metal enthrall her.

  “Anna,” he said in a low, quiet voice. “You’re going to follow Little Jonas and me home now. Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  * * *

  Mary Alice paced about Grosvenor Square. She had her servants knock on neighbors’ doors and check their ground floors and mews. Caroline followed Stratton’s order to hold her mama’s hand and tell her not to worry, but Caroline was a sheltered girl who didn’t know what evils lurked in the streets. But Eleanor knew. She had turned silent again and clutched Helandria tight. Mary Alice couldn’t muster the motherly strength to tell her that all would be well, because it might not be.

  A footman sprinted around the corner. Mary Alice released a cry and rushed to meet him. “Did you find her? Did you find her?”

  “No, Your Grace, but a watchman in the park said… ” The boy swallowed. “He said an unknown girl had drowned this morning and that you should see the coroner.”

  “What?” Mary Alice whispered, the words not making sense at first. “Please, please, no!” Tears flooded her eyes. “Jonas, help me,” she cried. “It can’t be her. Let it not be her. Not my child.”

  “Mama!”

  Mary Alice wheeled around at her son’s voice. He was running toward her. “We found her! We found Anna! The colonel and I found her!”

  Then Anna strolled into the square, Stratton protectively behind her. Mary Alice’s knees buckled under her. She grabbed the fence railing and forced herself to stay upright.

  “Mama,” Anna said, as if nothing were amiss.

  Hot tears streamed down Mary Alice’s face. “My child.” With shaking legs, she hurried to Anna and embraced her, not caring that Anna tensed at her touch.

  “I was so worried, darling,” Mary Alice wept. “You scared Mama.”

  “I’m sorry,” Anna said matter-of-factly. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “We decided to go on a stroll because there are so many fascinating things in London to observe,” Stratton explained in calm tones. “But then we became lost. And when some kind, concerned people wanted to help us, we became scared and had to rest on the ground. That’s how we became dirty.”

  “Oh, thank God. A child drowned in the park today and I thought… Oh, Nathaniel. I was so scared. I’ve never been more scared in my life.” She pressed herself against his chest.

  “There now,” he whispered, trailing his hand down her back. “We are well. We are going to be a strong, happy family. We’ll take special care of each other so we don’t become lost ever again.”

  “I love you,” Mary Alice cried. “I love you so much.”

  “Are you going to marry my mama?” Little Jonas asked Stratton. “Because you told those people that Anna is your daughter.”

  “Yes,” Stratton said quietly. “I love your mother. I want to be with her, and with you, for the rest of my life. Would you, Caroline, and Anna accept me as your stepfather? I know I can never replace your true father. He was a great man, like you will be one day soon,
Little Jonas. But I will love you as my own.”

  Mary Alice held her breath, fearing their reactions.

  “Then you can teach me to fence!” was Little Jonas’s enthusiastic response.

  Caroline hugged Eleanor and jumped up and down on her tiptoes “We can share a room! Then we can play with our dolls all day!”

  Mary Alice broke into laughter of relief and joy. Then an intense sensation enveloped her. She couldn’t explain it, but she knew Jonas was present. She felt him like a ghost inside her heart He came with no resentment or anger, only love. “Thank you, Jonas,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

  —THE END—

  Dear Reader,

  We had so much fun the first time around with Dukes in Disguise that we decided to do it again. This time for the duchesses. It’s a joy and privilege to work with such amazing women as Grace Burrowes and Emily Greenwood. They are as supportive and thoughtful as they are wonderful writers. I hope our enthusiasm for these stories and our friendship infuses these novella pages.

  If you would like to read more of my work, please check out my new Victorian romance Frail. I have excerpted the first scenes for your reading pleasure. My website contains excerpts of all my works, as well as interesting historical tidbits. Please stop by!

  Sign up for my newsletter to receive information about my exciting upcoming releases.

  Frail

  * * *

  December 1860

  I should have taken the first train out of London.

  Music thundered in Theo’s ears. His hands shook. Sweat poured down his back, drenching the shirt beneath his evening coat.

  On the chalked dance floor, couples swept to a waltz being played by a chamber orchestra of violins, flutes, and a harp. The light of the gas flames in the chandeliers glistened on the silk and taffeta skirts as they swished to the lift and fall of the dance. The young ladies’ cheeks were flushed from the heat, and their hair was styled into stiff waves and spirals and adorned with beads and flowers. The scent of perfumes and men’s hair oils burned Theo’s nose. He balled and flexed his hands, taking long breaths to slow his racing heart. The last five years tending his gardens and living like a monk in the Snowdonia mountains of North Wales hadn’t managed to lessen his angst at coming back to the city.

  “Pray, Theo, it's but a dance, not a parliamentary debate,” Theo’s stepmother Marie, the Countess of Staswick, said. She scanned the ballroom with her shiny cocoa eyes. “You are going to scare off the ladies with that glower you wear.”

  He forced a smile. Before him, another season's fresh crop of debutantes whirled—one of whom, his stepmother had assured him, would make a lovely bride. Marie had never surrendered her belief that the soft arms of a loving wife could “cure” Theo where quack doctors and opiates had failed.

  “Much better.” Marie inspected Theo’s smile from under her long lashes and then glanced at her husband. “All the ladies are peeking at your son—wanting to dance with such a handsome man. He resembles his father, of course.” She laughed.

  “You look fine this evening.” The words sounded stiff on his father’s lips. It was the same compliment he had given Theo when he had entered the parlor dressed in black coat and white cravat.

  Over the last year, the two men had reached a raw, uncomfortable truce. When Theo and his brothers were growing up, the earl never lavished praise on his sons. His voice boomed in the House of Lords, but, at home, he preferred to communicate with a curt word or a hard look of disapproval. Now he was nervous and awkward around his middle son, repeatedly asking him how he was feeling, about his home in Wales, or his opinion on political matters. Both flailed for the right words, inevitably choosing the wrong ones. A simple sorry couldn’t wipe away the pain Theo had inflicted on his family after returning from Crimea. In those months, he hadn’t been able to sleep for the racing of his mind, which he tried to numb with alcohol, opium, flesh, and violence. He had passed his nights stalking alone through the streets, his eyes darting from side to side, constantly watching, his muscles flexed, on a razor’s edge, and ready to reach for the rifle no longer at his side.

  “I know one of these pretty ladies is going to fall in love with you,” the earl said, straining to sound casual. He looked at his wife as if to ask, Did I say the right thing?

  Theo heard a burst of tingling female laughter rise above the music. Several couples quickly stepped aside for a young lady who had forgotten all rhythm of the dance and was spinning wildly under her partner’s arm. Her pastel blue gown was cut so low the ruffle of lace running across her breasts and shoulders barely covered her nipples. Black spiraling curls lifted in the air around her white porcelain face. A reckless grin hiked her high cheekbones and sparkled in her arresting eyes. They weren’t the dark brown or deep gray eyes he would have expected with her coloring, but a light silvery blue, matching her diamond necklace.

  “Who is that?” he asked, although in his gut he already knew the answer. She fit all the descriptions he had read in the papers: exotically beautiful and wild.

  “That is Miss Helena Gillingham,” his stepmother answered, confirming his assumptions. She leaned closer until her mouth was near his ear. “If you won her, you could turn Grosvenor Square into your private garden. No need to traipse off to Wales anymore.”

  His throat burned. His poor parents had no inkling Helena’s father, John Gillingham, was the reason he had torn himself away from Wales for the first time in five years.

  “I think even Petruchio would draw the line at her,” he quipped dryly. “Is her father in attendance?”

  Marie shook her head. “I rarely see the man at parties. But your father converses with him at the club almost every day.”

  Theo replied with a terse hmm and edged along the wall to get a better view of the human whirlwind as she slipped from her partner’s grasp and spun like a top into an aging couple. They shot her a hot glare.

  “I’m so terribly, terribly sorry,” she said, appearing anything but contrite as she pressed her hand to her mouth to stem the flow of giggles.

  So this was the daughter of the man who was bilking hundreds of his fellow men.

  She turned as if she knew he was thinking about her, her unsettlingly pale eyes locking on his. Her gaze swept over his person, returning to his face. An odd combination of heat and cold spread over his skin. He couldn’t deny her allure. She had the type of sparkling gaze that trapped a man like an insect pinned to a board. She studied him a moment more, then her lips formed a moue, and she gave a saucy toss of her head.

  Was she flirting with him? A grave error.

  A number of men who had served with him in Crimea had recommended he place his savings in her father’s bank. They trusted the banker with large parts of their modest savings, dependent on his five percent return. Theo first became suspicious of the banker when his neighbor, Emily, casually mentioned she had repeatedly written to her cousin Gillingham in London for help when her husband and son were first sick. She received no reply. What began as mere curiosity about the wealthy man turned into Theo’s two year-long investigation into his fictional board members, dubious stock trades and holdings, and doctored financial statements. That morning, Theo had disembarked the train from Chester and met with a Scotland Yard officer named Charles Wilson who had agreed to keep Theo’s name in confidence.

  “Gillingham has set up a phony board of directors for his bank and is siphoning money to himself by giving loans to suspicious companies,” Theo had told the officer. He pointed to Sheffield Metalworks of which Gillingham owned a majority of shares and sat on the board with several of his cronies. The machinery was outdated, and the company received perhaps one or two small railroad contracts a year. Why would Gillingham have this firm and others like it except to hide money?

  “I estimate about seven hundred thousand pounds has been intentionally taken from his bank’s capital,” Theo had continued. “He is stealing. He is going to run and leave his customers—my soldiers—with the full ex
tent of his liability.”

  And now Gillingham’s daughter flirted and twirled in a shining silk gown financed by the same men who were sent to war in ridiculous uniforms, and made to contend with flimsy tents and no food. Theo may have left the army when he stepped onto the London docks after two years in Crimea, insisting on being called a plain mister again, no longer Colonel Mallory, but that primal need to take care of his men remained.

  “She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” a voice said, jerking him from his thoughts.

  Theo turned. Beside him stood a young man with bristle-like, blonde whiskers and a squared dimpled chin. “Eliot,” Theo whispered.

  “Pardon?” The man blinked.

  Damn. Eliot was dead. One of a dozen that day who were still reeking of dysentery when he was lined in a ditch beside his dead comrades and covered with dirt.

  “I’m sorry,” Theo muttered. “I’m confused.”

  The gentleman laughed. “Miss Gillingham does that to a fellow.”

  Theo made no response and continued along the edge of the dance floor. He knew he should square away a partner for the next set to appease Marie. Instead, he motioned to a servant to bring him some wine. He lingered in a corner, sipped from his glass, and observed Miss Gillingham.

  She had traipsed back to her partner. Her lips curved in a childish pout that, no doubt, her admirers found adorable. As she lifted and fell in the 1-2-3 rhythm, her gaze kept drifting in Theo’s direction. When the song at last ended, she clasped her partner’s arm, allowing him to escort her from the floor, then peeked over her shoulder at Theo—with an invitation in her eyes.

  But he had seen enough to satisfy his curiosity about the woman. She was a spoiled, oblivious child, and he wasn’t going to let her sit on his conscience. And yet he continued to study the graceful curve of her back as she crossed the threshold into the parlor where the refreshments were laid out. Again, she tossed her curls, casting him a beckoning glance before disappearing into the room.