When a Duchess Says I Do

by Grace Burrowes

  “Which suggestion Jane batted aside like a new maid going after cobwebs, but there’s our Duncan, in godforsaken Berkshire, surrounded by the racing crowd, the hunt set, and the farmers’ daughters who’d love to marry into a ducal family.”

  The baby got a fist wrapped in Quinn’s hair. No gray there yet, but then Quinn was only in his mid-thirties. If anything, he seemed younger now than he had ten years ago.

  While Duncan had always seemed grown-up. Not lonely, exactly, but inured to life.

  “I compromised with my duchess,” Quinn said. “Duncan has one year to make the estate profitable, after which I will take over management of the property for him. If at the end of one year, he has not brought Brightwell up to scratch, then management of the property remains in his hands, though I will hold a life estate.”

  Quinn was big, dark, unfashionably prone to muscle, and easy to mistake for a bullyboy in fine tailoring. He’d used that perception to his advantage when establishing his bank, and yet, he was also shrewd in a way Stephen had never had to be

  “And because of that life estate,” Stephen said, “Duncan cannot easily sell the property. Either he learns to manage Brightwell in the next year, or he learns to manage it over the next decade—if he wants to escape back to his travels. Is this kind, Quinn? Even schoolboys eventually win free of having to study topics they abhor.”

  Quinn settled onto the sofa with the child in his lap. “Duncan has more than enough brains to bring Brightwell ’round. All he wants is motivation to accomplish the task. What does the future hold for him otherwise? Another five years touring the Continent with some spoiled lordling?”

  “Many men have a worthwhile career as tutors,” Stephen said, a career he’d consider but for his damned leg.

  “Those men are not our cousins. Jane wants Duncan settled. If he gets Brightwell sorted out in the next year, then he can lark about wherever he pleases.”

  “I’d best pay a call on him,” Stephen said. “I know a bit about managing a property, which affliction we must also lay at dear Jane’s feet.”

  She’d prevailed on Quinn to give Stephen a modest estate when Stephen had turned twenty-one, because, in Jane’s estimation, a young man needed his own quarters. This was Jane’s euphemism for ensuring Stephen’s dubious friends and paramours did not disturb the ducal household.

  “You own the best property of the lot,” Quinn said. “Also the smallest acreage. Althea and Constance wanted more distance from London and needed a challenge.”

  Althea and Constance, Stephen’s older sisters, wanted dowering, in other words, and productive land was the sweetest asset a doting brother could add to the marriage settlements.

  Both sisters remained unmarried, despite having dowries overflowing with sweetness.

  “I do thank you for your generosity,” Stephen said, though was it generous to exile a fellow upon his majority? “The Continent is endlessly fascinating, but one wearies of wandering.” For a time, then one wearied of staying put. “I’ll trot off to Berkshire in the morning.”

  “You’ll mount a sneak attack?”

  Duncan had lived with the ducal branch of the family for years—when there had been money, but no title—and yet, in some ways, Duncan was still apparently a stranger to Stephen’s siblings.

  “I could send him a note, Quinn, but if he was in the middle of a good book, he’d shrug, set the note aside, and neglect to inform his housekeeper. Did you know he sought to publish a travelogue of our itinerary?”

  “Everybody is publishing travelogues.”

  And Quinn, who had not learned to read until late adolescence, had no time for literature that merely entertained and broadened the mind. He could glean more about a person from examining their ledger book than any priest had ever learned in a confessional, but Quinn had probably never read a complete work of fiction.

  “Do you read anything other than the bank reports, Quinn?”

  “I read to the children.” He nuzzled the baby’s nape. “I like poetry. Some poetry.”

  That made sense. “Poetry doesn’t take thousands of words to tell a story.”

  “Exactly. Poetry gets straight to the point and does in twenty lines what Duncan’s philosophers couldn’t sort out as well in an entire book.”

  “So have you memorized a poem to spring on Jane?”

  Quinn rose again, the child cradled against his chest. “Speaking of Jane, she must have decided to wedge in a nap along with changing her dress. Before you leave for your missionary work in Berkshire, stay a few days and let Jane cosset you. The girls and I could use the reinforcements.”

  He quit the room on that admission, the baby waving a damp fist at Stephen over her papa’s shoulder.

  Duncan might not be lonely, but Stephen certainly was. He left a volume of Wordsworth’s poetry so “The Daffodils” was open on the low table before the hearth—Quinn’s preferred end of the sofa—and sent a footman to inform the stables that he’d ride for Berkshire in the morning.

  Chapter Three

  “I thought we discussed the undesirability of your death from exposure to the elements.” Duncan stopped short of the desk at which Miss Maddie of the Abundant Caution sat swathed in two shawls, a third shawl draped over her lap. “This will not do, madam.”

  He’d sent her a note to meet him in the library after she’d broken her fast, and then he’d been waylaid by his gamekeeper. Mr. Hefner had taken fifteen minutes to convey that before the snow had started he’d found snares set along three different game trails by the river.

  Miss Maddie remained seated, an indication that she was indeed a lady. A servant, a runaway governess, or a housekeeper who’d stolen a few too many spoons would have popped to her feet.

  “You said to meet you in the library, Mr. Wentworth. This is the library.”

  “This is an ice cave with a few books in it,” Duncan said. “Come with me.”

  She did not so much as gather up her shawls. “Where are we going?”

  “To the darkest dungeon in the dankest cave in the magical land every schoolchild knows to be secreted beneath the farms of Berkshire.”

  Her gaze went to the two-story windows, which helped make the library impossible to heat. She regarded the falling snow with the sort of bleakness Duncan might have expected from Stephen, for whom a snowfall was tantamount to house arrest. At least twelve inches had come down during the night, and more was slowly accumulating. Nobody would travel in this weather.

  Nobody with any sense. “You sought to leave this morning,” Duncan said, the realization oddly disappointing. Was his company truly so unappealing that she’d rather fend for herself on the open road than transcribe his journals?

  “One doesn’t like to be a burden, Mr. Wentworth.” She was still too skinny, still pale, but her eyes had acquired a battle light, albeit one with the wick turned low.

  For now. Stephen had had the same frustrated air when Duncan had taken him on as a pupil, and great conflagrations had blossomed from that dull spark—thank God and Wentworth stubbornness.

  “Did no one ever tell you that pride is a sin, Miss Maddie?”

  “Did no one ever tell you that sermonizing is the province of clergy, Mr. Wentworth?”

  “As it happens, I studied for the church and actually held a curate’s post. If you would be so good as to join me in the estate office, I will humbly attempt to contain my joy at your continued company. The estate office is kept so warm that you will not even be able to see your breath.”

  “Where is the rabbit?” she asked, rising. “I ask myself, if the creature has only its fur coat for protection, and can thrive despite weeks of bitter weather, where does it shelter?”

  The question had philosophical underpinnings that Duncan ignored. “He burrows into the ground and dreams of sunshine and clover.” Or possibly the company of warm, friendly lady bunnies. One didn’t say that in polite company, but nature was nothing if not preoccupied with procreation.

  Unlike Duncan.

/>   “Your housekeeper found me some clothes,” Miss Maddie said. “I will consider them a loan.”

  “You may have them, madam. My wardrobe boasts as many dresses as I need for the present.”

  She gave him an exasperated look when he was trying, with his usual lack of success, to be humorous.

  “I am not a criminal, Mr. Wentworth, though I have taken dropped apples from orchards and scraps from the middens of a busy inn. I would rather admit to those petty wrongs than be a charity case.”

  He held the door for her, and she swept through, clearly unaware that even with so small a detail, she revealed herself to be a woman born to privilege.

  One who envied solitary rabbits their dark winter burrows.

  “I wonder if the rabbit nibbling from my garden considers itself to be committing any wrong at all,” Duncan said, opening the concealed panel that led to the footmen’s stairs. “The estate office is on the next floor up. The higher vantage point allows me to gaze despairingly upon my acres. Did you sleep well?”

  She rounded the landing and paused, her hand on the owl carved into the newel post. “I slept so well, I woke up more exhausted than when I went to bed.”

  Duncan knew that kind of sleep, the kind that flattened a man already lying in a ditch of bone-deep fatigue.

  “Then I must not deluge you with my brilliant prose until tomorrow,” he said, resuming their progress up the steps.

  She followed more slowly, suggesting that even climbing a staircase taxed her. “A mere cascade will do for today, thank you. Why do your acres cause you to despair?”

  They didn’t, not yet. They drove Duncan to resentment worthy of an adolescent scholar forced to repeat a dull exercise for the third time. The despair would come in a year or so, when Quinn announced that Duncan’s sentence was to become permanent.

  Duncan opened the door to the estate office, a blast of warmth pouring into the corridor. “Welcome to my dungeon.”

  Miss Maddie stopped short a few steps past the doorway. “I hadn’t realized Berkshire was prone to tornados.” She moved into the room turning in a slow circle as Duncan closed the door. “Will a short man singing to himself soon appear and offer to bring order here if I’ll surrender my firstborn after marrying the prince?”

  She referred to a children’s tale, one featuring a troll or some other objectionable fellow with a long name. The children of the poor were not generally read fairy tales. Books were expensive, and really, what would be the point? Most poor children were born knowing princes and good fairies never saved the day.

  Duncan had eventually learned that lesson too.

  “This is the organized version,” he said, gesturing to piles of paper and ledger books stacked haphazardly on every level surface. The chairs alone were free of the estate’s administrative wreckage. The cats left alimentary evidence of their displeasure if Duncan infringed on their territory to that extent.

  Miss Maddie pushed back the curtains from the window above the desk. “Where do we begin?”

  Beyond the glass, Brightwell had become a setting for a Norse tale of giants and magic bears. All was blanketed in fanciful curves and drifts of white, a deceptively soft tableau that might have been the death of Miss Maddie Pay-Me-In-Cash.

  The sun cut through the overcast in slices of gold that turned the falling snow into a thousand diamonds dancing down onto a bed of blinding white.

  I have missed England. The thought was preposterous and unwelcome, but Miss Maddie was also gazing out on the wintry scene with banked yearning in her eyes.

  Who or what did she miss? Who or what did she regret? “We’ll soon be chilled to the bone if you insist on having the draperies open, madam.”

  She took a seat near the blazing hearth. “I don’t chill so easily, and reading is best done with a quantity of light. You never answered my question.”

  “Says she who dodges interrogations as nimbly as a hare.”

  She twitched up her shawls, covering herself from the ears down. “Are we to engage in productive enterprise, Mr. Wentworth, or waste the morning in pointless contention?”

  “Pointless contention can be another name for philosophical debate.”

  Well, damn. Somebody had taught her the tutor’s most effective weapon with unruly scholars—the disappointed silence. Perhaps she had been a governess after all. Duncan pulled a bound folder from the shelves at waist height and untied the ribbon.

  “Let’s determine whether you can decipher my penmanship, for without that ability, the entire enterprise is doomed.”

  She accepted the papers he shoved at her, then reached toward her face, her hand dropping back to her lap.

  “Use mine,” Duncan said, extracting a pair of spectacles from his breast pocket.

  She took them, held them up to the light, then used the hem of a shawl to polish the lenses. Perched on her nose, the spectacles imparted a prim air, which for reasons known only to snowbound imbeciles, made her oddly attractive.

  “Prostitution in Paris,” she recited, “is undertaken with none of the outraged hypocrisy that characterizes the English version. The French are pragmatic even in this, albeit joyfully pragmatic, or so the coquettes would have their clientele believe. The trade is plied—”

  “Enough.” Duncan retrieved his essay. “You can both decipher my handwriting and translate French at sight. Good to know.”

  Her expression was disgruntled. “You establish that from three lines of prose?”

  “My handwriting is worthy of every pejorative in Dr. Johnson’s lexicon. For the sake of continuity, you’d best start at the beginning of my travels. In a general sense, the itinerary begins near your shoulders and ends near your feet.”

  That description had a risqué interpretation, though the lady chose to ignore it.

  She rose and walked around Duncan to the shelves nearer the window. “Then my first priority is to put the material in chronological order. I trust you were conscientious about dating your observations?”

  “Yes.” Maybe. On occasion.

  The room smelled of leather—the best of the bound volumes had been moved here away from hordes of mice in the library—with a faint undernote of coal smoke. Miss Maddie, by contrast, exuded the fragrance of roses. Good old damasks, their perfume straightforward and assertive. Somebody had doubtless stored rose sachets among the dresses in the attic, or perhaps the staff had put rose-scented soap in Miss Maddie’s guest room.

  “The task seems simple enough,” she said, reaching for the first folder on the leftmost shelf. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

  Dismissed again, which should be a relief. “If you need anything, the parlor across the corridor has a bell pull.”

  “I need solitude, Mr. Wentworth, and a good deal of time.”

  She needed a step ladder, a footstool, and about three months of good nutrition. Duncan bowed and gave her the solitude.

  * * *

  “Where the hell could she be?”

  Lieutenant Colonel Lord Atticus Parker had slept, awoken, danced, and dined with that question drumming in his mind for the past four months.

  “Somewhere safe, God willing,” Thomas Wakefield replied. “Matilda has endured Moscow winters. A little snow won’t bother her much.”

  And that was the problem. Matilda Wakefield had endured Russian winters, forced marches on the Peninsula as little more than a child, Viennese ballrooms, Paris intrigues.…She’d be entirely too unbothered by a life in hiding. She was a lady—a widowed duchess, no less—but she was also her father’s daughter.

  Wakefield poured another portion of port into both glasses. The snow had stopped, and a howling wind had come with nightfall, meaning roads would drift closed by morning.

  “You haven’t heard anything?” Parker asked.

  Wakefield’s jovial façade faltered. “Do you think if I knew where my only child was that I’d be sitting on my backside swilling port and pretending an optimism I don’t feel? Brigands abound, women are vulnerable, and from
what we know, she took very little in the way of money or valuables with her.”

  Matilda had taken an unusually broad linguistic education, a fine appreciation for art, and an unfeminine penchant for chess, though damned little in the way of practical necessities. She had also taken the key to Parker’s advancement in a military too happy to remain at peace.

  Parker bore a certain fondness for the lady—he’d courted her, after all—and no fondness at all for her father. “I could go back to my superiors,” he said. “Have them put out discreet word that she’s missing. Every village and hamlet has a militia of some sort.”

  “And have her name on handbills all over the realm?” Wakefield replied. “Thank you, but no. You may not care to protect Matilda’s reputation, but I certainly do.”

  More likely, Wakefield protected himself at Matilda’s expense. “Her reputation won’t do her much good if she’s dying of a lung fever somewhere in East Anglia.”

  Wakefield rose, a lean man aging handsomely. He was an old hand at the diplomacy game, sometimes representing his government officially, sometimes unofficially. He dealt in the gentlemanly business of procuring art, which was in truth a matter of looting the treasures of European aristocratic families left destitute by war.

  “She’s not in East Anglia,” Wakefield said. “She’s not hiding out in any of the ports. She’s not in Edinburgh. I doubt she’s in Paris for I’ve too many friends there. I fear she’s gone to Boston in truth.”

  This was the story they’d concocted. Matilda had seen much of Europe, but had supposedly developed a fascination with the New World. She was enjoying the hospitality of French friends who dwelled in Boston, and no date had been set for her return.

  And thus no date had been set for her to wed her dashing lieutenant colonel, hero of the Battle of Colina Azul.

  “I’ve sent inquiries to the American seaboard,” Parker said, rising from the table. “Your daughter agreed to marry me, and her disappearance will soon grow awkward.”

  “My dear colonel,” Wakefield replied in his most patient tones, “she might well be dead, and a little awkwardness is hardly the greatest of my concerns. Perhaps if you’d been a more doting fiancé, we might not be in this coil.”