“I beg your pardon,” Verity said. The duke spun towards her, his face somehow even redder. But really, she couldn’t stand another minute of this. The world might teem with bullies and tyrants, and there might not be a damned thing she could do to stop them, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t try. “You no longer have any need to be generous, because Lord Montagu—” referring to Ash by his proper title actually tasted bitter on her tongue, but the look on this man’s face was worth it “—has settled three hundred pounds a year on his aunt.” This was pure invention—her goal was to draw fire from Lady Caroline. “So you can put that in your pipe and smoke it. In fact, he has more right to be in this house than you do, so why don’t you take yourself off now.”
Verity was not such a fool that she thought the man would meekly comply, but she succeeded in diverting the man’s attention from Lady Caroline. However she did not expect what actually happened, which was for the man to roar like a toddler in the midst of a tantrum, and then take hold of the nearest vase, smashing it to the floor.
“You probably owe your father a hundred guineas for that vase,” Verity said, because now the man was stalking towards her and that would give Lady Caroline time to collect herself. “All these years you’ve been carrying on thinking it all belongs to you, but it doesn’t, you bloody oaf. Now why don’t you fuck right off.” She was going to get hit, and it was going to hurt, but this man was plainly going to hit somebody, and it was far better for it to be Verity than Lady Caroline, because Lady Caroline looked like she had been through enough of that in her life. “I’m what, half your size? And you’re going to hit me?” She held her hands out to her sides, as if inviting him.
“No, he will not,” said a cool voice behind her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ash in the door that led to the street, idly lounging in the doorframe. Never before had Verity so vastly appreciated his talent for feigning boredom. “Good day, Uncle,” Ash said. “I suppose we can dispense with the formal introductions.”
Ash’s first thought upon seeing the man who had wished him dead, committed his father, and waged a decades-long campaign of terror against his aunt, was that of course Verity would waste no time in flinging herself into the fray. Of course she wouldn’t behave sensibly and run away from a man she knew to be a would-be murderer. His heart filled with a mixture of fondness and exasperation. Catching the eye of a nearby footman, he mouthed constable and watched the lad slip out the door.
Positioning himself between Verity and his raging uncle, Ash gestured with his chin to the sweeping staircase at the end of the hall where a few black-clad figures peered over a balcony. “I realize that this matter must be distressing to you, but surely you can’t mean to make a scene in front of the servants.” Ash did not care one jot about making a scene in front of servants or anyone else; as far as he cared, his uncle was free to embarrass himself in front of any audience he wished. But he needed to say something to buy time before the constable arrived, if a constable would even be of any use. In anticipation of Lord Robert’s arrival, Lady Caroline issued orders for the servants to deny him entry, but Ash supposed they ought to have guessed that his uncle would bully his way into getting anything he wanted.
Now his uncle took a step closer. “These are all lies. I don’t know or care who you are but I know you’re no nephew of mine. My solicitors assure me that you and my whore of a sister have no evidence to support this cock and bull story you’ve cooked up between the pair of you.”
“We can let the chief justice decide that next week,” Ash said, wondering at the calm in his voice. “Meanwhile, I suggest you leave.” A week ago, Ash would have felt preposterous, attempting to eject a man from his own house. But it wasn’t his uncle’s house—it was Ash’s grandfather’s house, and his aunt’s home. Ash had every right to be here: he belonged here as much as he belonged in Holywell Street, as much has he had ever belonged anywhere. This was his birthright, and as vastly unfair as it was that some people inherited fortunes and others inherited nothing at all, he wasn’t going to let this man do him out of what was his.
“It’s an utter shame for a grown man to carry on like a baby who lost his rattle,” Verity chided. “Are all men in your family like that, Lord Montagu?” Ash was fairly certain she’d sooner have her tongue cut out than call him by his title, so he guessed she intended it as a barb for his uncle.
“I’m afraid so, Miss Plum. I assume that in a fortnight I’ll start throwing food at the table.” Ash regarded his uncle dispassionately, with only a flicker of interest, because the more bored he acted, the redder and angrier his uncle became. If Ash kept going he might provoke the man into an apoplexy, and it likely spoke no good things about his conscience that he found this a consummation devoutly to be wished. “As illuminating as this has been, Uncle, I’m afraid we’ll have to continue this at another time when there are no ladies present.”
“This whore is no lady,” Lord Robert growled. Evidently he was the sort of man who believed all women who thwarted his wishes were whores. How very predictable.
“Quite right,” Ash said, catching Verity’s eye and seeing something like amusement there. “I beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said solemnly, then turned back to his uncle. “She’ll take me to task for suggesting otherwise as soon as we’re in private. Now, either this is going to come to blows with servants watching and newspapermen in the street outside, or you’ll leave.” He made up that last bit about the newspapermen, but it was plausible.
Lord Robert looked like he was seriously considering the first option. His hands were curled into fists and his expression took on an even more menacing cast.
“Robert,” Caroline said, her voice quavering. “You are frightening the servants and making an ass of yourself. It will take generations to undo the shame you’ve brought on this family. Don’t compound it by committing violent assault in the foyer of Arundel House and getting taken away by redcoats. I can only imagine what the judge would think of you then. Go stay at your club.”
Glowering, the man looked between Ash and Caroline. Then he muttered an indistinct oath and returned to the street.
“I didn’t think that would work,” Caroline said. Her hands trembled. Behind her, her maid looked ready to run to her mistress, and Ash realized grimly that usually when this sort of scene played itself out, his aunt had wounds that needed tending to.
“Nor did I,” Ash said. He didn’t like it. That had been too easy. But his aunt seemed almost giddy with relief, so he merely reminded the servants to bolt the door and then headed for the library, gesturing for Verity to enter first. As soon as he shut the door behind them, Verity was in his arms. She didn’t even kiss him, just flung her arms around his neck and held on for dear life.
“Ash, what the hell kind of situation have you gotten yourself involved in?”
“I’ll tell you,” he said into her hair, “until today I hoped my aunt was exaggerating. She’s had a hard time of it, and I thought she might have overestimated his capacity for violence. Now, if anything, I think she was making light of it.” She smelled like soap and ink and home and he tightened his arms around her. “How does a man get like that without being killed in a tavern brawl?”
“Not a lot of sons of dukes involved in tavern brawls,” Verity said dryly, stepping out of his embrace. “Although, what do I know. I’m hardly an expert. Duels, maybe. And even then, I don’t think they suffer any ill consequences.” The man they had seen in the hall was manifestly not hampered by the forces that kept regular people from smashing vases whenever they felt stroppy. “One thing is clear, and it’s that your aunt was quite right that he needs to be stopped. Was it true what your uncle said about there being insufficient evidence?”
“Oh, there’s plenty of evidence that the grandson of the Duke of Arundel did not die, but was instead sent to be fostered in a village in Norfolk.” He sighed and leaned against the door. “What’s lacking is any information specifically connecting my history with that of Arundel’s gr
andson. There are bits and pieces of circumstantial evidence—a letter signed by the first woman who fostered me, the scattered memories of an aging cleric, something vague whispered to the headmaster of my old school when I was brought there—but nothing firm and fast. The solicitor says it’s enough to go on, but we’d all feel better with that one bit tidied up.”
“You were dreadful in there,” she said, making it a compliment. “I thought you were going to give that man an apoplexy.”
“If I had ten more minutes I might have managed the trick,” he said.
“You apologized to me for calling me a lady.” She dissolved into laughter, resting her forehead against the door beside him, her shoulders shaking with mirth.
“It was remiss of me for even suggesting such a thing,” he intoned gravely. “It’s as if I learned nothing from you or Nate.”
“So how are you?” she asked, resting her cheek on the door so she faced him. He turned towards her, and their mouths were inches away.
He studied her appearance. She wore no hat and at least twenty percent of her hair had abandoned all pretenses to being involved in anything like a coiffure. Beneath her cloak she had on what he recognized as the frock she wore to clean the soot from the fireplace. He did not know whether it was his imagination or whether her mode of dress had become more resolutely chaotic in the weeks since he had left Holywell Street, but he was certain he had never seen a more welcome sight. However, he was soon to be Lord Montagu, she was a pamphleteer and publisher of illicit novels, and when he looked upon her he ought to see that there could be no future between them. But he wanted to take hold of her wrist and never let it go, wanted to keep her in this house that would soon, appallingly, belong to him.
“I shouldn’t have left you the way I did,” he said.
“True, but that doesn’t answer my question.”
“How am I?” He shrugged and pushed himself away from the wall. “I wish I knew. I miss you and seeing you here is . . .” Confusing? Wrong? “I’ll never regret seeing you, Plum, but it would have been easier to make a clean break of it. Why did you come?” He heard the weariness in his own voice.
She reached towards him then pulled back her hand. “I wanted to tell you that I’m still your friend. What I told you still holds. We’re friends, with or without the rest of it.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No. I don’t want to hear it. I’m in love with you. I don’t want your friendship. It would only remind me of what we aren’t. Your friendship—” he spat the word “—would make me miserable. And goddammit, Verity, I’m incensed that it wouldn’t make you miserable too.”
“Then why the hell did you take me into your bed if you knew it would have to end?”
“I fooled myself into thinking it wouldn’t,” he admitted, furious with himself. “And, when I was being halfway rational, I thought I’d be able to part with you the way I’ve parted with everyone. I thought I’d be able to move on.”
“And what in heaven’s name did you think would happen to me? Did you think I’d just kiss you goodbye and forget that I had fallen in love with you?”
They stared at one another, the weight of her words hanging in the air between them. “I didn’t expect you to love me back,” he said finally.
“Then you’re more prodigiously stupid than I had thought.” And with that she stormed from the house, leaving Ash alone.
Chapter Sixteen
Verity closed the shop for the rest of the day so she could be furious in peace. She was curled on the sofa, sulkily drinking tea and breaking a piece of toast into angry little crumbs when Nan knocked on the door.
“There’s a lady downstairs,” the older woman said, handing Verity a calling card as if it were a holy relic.
“Mrs. Allenby?” Verity asked, perplexed as to why Portia would leave a card. Then she looked at the name on the ivory rectangle. “Good heavens, that’s Ash’s aunt. Show her up, will you?” She patted her hair, but it was a lost cause, so she jabbed some pins in it and hoped for the best.
“Lady Caroline,” Verity said when the older woman entered the study. Seeing her in this room, where Ash had been such a familiar presence, Verity could see their resemblance to an almost eerie degree. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“It occurred to me that we’ve met twice now.” She glanced around the room in a way that could not help but take in the worn carpet and cracked windowpane. “But under less than ideal circumstances for getting to know one another.”
This was true, but Verity was at a loss as to why Lady Caroline would want to know her. “Indeed, ma’am,” she said, gesturing at the sofa for her guest while she herself sat on the chair.
“I’ve heard so much about you.”
“You have?”
A flicker of a wry smile darted across Lady Caroline’s mouth. “You can’t imagine that my nephew has been silent where you are concerned. You would be amazed at how often the conversation drifts in such a direction that he finds it necessary to mention what you would think or what you would do.”
With a wave of irritation, Verity understood that Ash’s aunt had come to warn her off. If so, she could spare herself the trouble.
“I’m a devoted reader of your new magazine,” Lady Caroline said. “Do people truly send you those letters or do you make them up?”
Whatever Verity had expected from Lady Caroline, it had not been a conversation about the management of a ladies’ magazine. “I made the first letter up. Actually, Ash made it up.” She remembered that morning in her study with Nate and Ash, when they had all laughed and been momentarily carefree. “But in the other issues I answered letters that have been sent in. We get heaps of them,” she said, not bothering to conceal her pride.
“This morning, I was so pleased to discover the December issue on the breakfast table with my tea. But your answer to the letters . . .” She folded her gloves in her lap. “It was not your usual manner of advising correspondents.”
That had been her response to the ladies with unfortunate marriages. “My first draft was a three-page screed on reforming the divorce laws.”
A small smile flickered at the edges of Lady Caroline’s mouth. “But what you actually wrote was quite . . . well, this is an inexcusably personal question but did you have my nephew in mind when you wrote of the great hope of love weathering obstacles?”
Verity refused to be embarrassed. “Yes. I wrote it in a moment of delusion. If you’ve come to warn me off Ash, there’s no need. We parted on exceedingly bad terms.”
“Unequal marriages are notoriously difficult,” said Lady Caroline. “Everybody says so.”
“Quite,” snapped Verity, not needing the point driven home. “Neither of us is contemplating marriage.”
“It’s going to be bad enough for my nephew, trying to exist in the circles that his birth ought to have entitled him. Marrying a commoner will make it quite impossible.”
“Ma’am,” Verity said with rising exasperation, “you don’t need to convince me. You, Ash, and I are all in perfect agreement on this matter.”
Lady Caroline appeared not to have heard her. “On the other hand, it would not precisely be a marriage of unequals because he has been a tradesman and you are a tradesman’s daughter.”
“I’m a tradesman myself, I’ll have you know,” she said before realizing that this was not at all the point. “Besides, Ash and I are equal, and you and I are equal, and—” Verity did not want to lecture this woman on Locke.
“Oh, I’ve read that Wollstonecraft book. But I’m not the one you need to convince.”
“I’m not trying to convince you and I’m certain Ash needs no convincing on that topic,” Verity said, bewildered as to how Mary Wollstonecraft entered the conversation.
“Precisely!” Lady Caroline said. “Indeed, there is something charming about a man who remains loyal to his childhood sweetheart despite a change in circumstance.”
Verity’s head was spinning. “I’m finding it difficult
to follow the thread of this conversation, ma’am.”
“Would you have married him if he were a commoner?”
Portia had asked her the same question in this very room, not a week earlier. “I never wanted to marry. I always thought the last thing in the world I needed was a husband.”
“Very wise.”
“My parents—” Verity shook her head in a way that she hoped the lady would interpret as had a marriage one would not wish on one’s worst enemies.
“Mine as well, I’m afraid.”
“And the letters I get only confirm my earlier beliefs.”
“A very flawed institution, marriage is,” Lady Caroline said.
“Quite,” Verity agreed.
“A thoroughly difficult group of people, men,” the lady added.
Verity nodded.
“Despite all of that, I believe my nephew is a good man.”
“Certainly,” Verity said.
“So you would have married him?” Lady Caroline asked.
Verity had lived long enough with Nate to know she was being argued into a corner. She thought again of the conversation she had with Portia not long ago. “If he had asked me, if he truly wanted that of me, maybe. Eventually, yes, I probably would have given in,” she admitted. She was aware that this was not a stirring declaration of love, but the fact was that a month ago she would have rejected the possibility of marriage out of hand. That she was considering it, even so tepidly, was a radical shift, and, she feared, the thin end of the wedge.
A Duke in Disguise Page 18