A Season for Love (5 page)

“
Sims,” he bawled, waving the note as
the butler materialized in the bookroom doorway. “See this is
delivered immediately. And tell Benton to start packing
immediately. I shall be journeying into the country for a sennight
or so.”

“
But, Your Grace—” Sims’s customary
aplomb gave way to a mix of shock and disapproval.

“
I have not forgotten the wedding,” the
duke growled, “but go I must. Lady Caroline will accompany me.
Move!” he shouted as the butler continued to hover.

“
Your Grace,” Sims announced bravely,
“you have a visitor just arrived. Lord Frayne.”

“
Tell him to go away.” One glance at
the thin line of his butler’s mouth, the speaking suggestion in his
long-familiar eyes, and the duke’s lips curled in derision. At
himself. There was nothing quite like a reprimand from a servant
who had known him since he was in short coats. “If you think I
should use Frayne as a messenger,” he told his butler, “you are
fair and far out. See that the note is delivered as
instructed.”

“
Yes, Your Grace.” Shoulders not quite
as straight as they had been, Sims retreated toward the door. Just
a moment too late.

“
Longville!” Anthony Norville, Viscount
Frayne, came striding through the door, looking as impeccably
dressed and full of life as if he had had more than four hours
sleep. “I came to congratulate you on surviving an evening with my
stultifying and occasionally shocking family connections. Or is
that a retraction of the betrothal you are sending off to the
newspapers?” he added, eyeing the missive in Sims’s
hand.

“
I’m off on a journey, Frayne. Haven’t
time to talk—” The duke broke off, following Norville’s inquiring
gaze to the young lady who had risen from her chair and
was—
blushing
? Good God, had
she reached that age? Blushing over Frayne, that care-for-nothing
fribble? Surely not. The duke gave his daughter a sharp look before
performing the necessary introductions. By God, she
was
blushing. The child had gone from
porcelain to rose red. He was missing something, and Marcus, Duke
of Longville, did not care for secrets. Not in the
least.

Particularly not today.

“
Run along, Frayne,” he ordered. “We
must pack. I have sent your sister a note. Never fear, I will be
back in time for the wedding.”

“
You are going to go through with—”
Caroline gasped.

“
We will leave within the hour,” the
duke interrupted, deliberately misinterpreting her
protest.

“
You can’t,” his daughter countered.
Flatly.

“
Tony, be off. You will have time
enough to become acquainted with Lady Caroline in the
future.”

Since Tony knew the only packing the Duke of
Longville would be required to perform for himself was the removal
of funds for the journey from his safe, the viscount easily sniffed
a mystery in the air. Such abject haste, such determination to turn
a well-known visitor from the door, had more behind it than the
necessity of preparing for a journey.

And if there were a mystery, Tony speculated,
his enigmatic young acquaintance from the night before was surely
in it up to her magnificently regal neck. “I trust you will be
returning to London, Lady Caroline,” the viscount pronounced,
showing no signs of obeying the duke’s irritable commands to take
his leave.

“
As to that, I truly doubt I shall be
doing so,” Caroline murmured, her wide amber eyes flicking a
doubtful glance toward her father.

“
Lady Caroline will be living here,”
Longville stated firmly. “Lady Eugenia is already aware that I
expect her to sponsor Caroline’s come-out,” he added stiffly. “And
just what, pray tell, did you expect?” he challenged his daughter.
“Had you some notion of living in your cottage until you dwindle to
dust? Or perhaps you thought to earn your bread as a governess or
companion? Or a life upon the stage? Is that it, Caroline? Pray do
not be any more foolish than you have been. I have stood all the
nonsense this morning that I can bear.” The Duke of Longville
glared at the girl he had thought was his only child. “You will
live here and make your come-out. Is that understood?”

Caroline bobbed a curtsy. “Yes, Your Grace.”
Inwardly, she seethed.

Tony Norville examined the stormy faces of
father and daughter. He shook his head. Wherever they were going,
it was going to be a very long journey.

~ * ~

“
Gone off!” Lady Worley exclaimed. “He
cannot have gone off. The wedding is practically upon us. You are
mistaken, my dear.” Malvinia Norville, Countess of Worley, thrust
out an imperious hand. “Pray let me see the note. No doubt you have
misread his hand. The higher the rank, the more poorly a gentleman
feels entitled to write.”

“
Twelve days, mama,” Lady Eugenia
corrected as she dutifully handed over the duke’s hastily scribbled
lines. “Longville says he will return in time for the wedding.” Not
that she truly believed it. That exquisitely lovely
child,
who had somehow dazzled her
sophisticated younger brother, had charged into London and winkled
Longville right out from under her nose. Undoubtedly, the chit had
regaled him with the contretemps in the library, and off they had
gone to goodness-knows-where, leaving his bride flat, one short
step from the altar.

The two Norville ladies were in the drawing
room of Worley House on Berkeley Square. Lady Worley had been about
to ascend to the nursery floor to warm her heart with a quick visit
to her granddaughter when, quite unexpectedly, she overheard her
butler, in the hall below, turning callers away from the door.

In response to a query directed over the
gallery railing, her butler had replied, “I believe Lady Eugenia is
not quite herself this morning, my lady,” an ominous phrase which
had sent Lady Worley posthaste to the drawing room, where she found
her only daughter slumped on her fine Egyptian-style settee,
looking blue as a peacock’s drooping tail.

And no wonder. Lady Worley continued to stare
at the two short lines of the duke’s note as if their true meaning
would magically appear, if only she could will it so. “This is very
strange,” she pronounced, frowning down at Longville’s slanted
scrawl. “A family emergency requires his presence. He will return
in time for the wedding. Scarcely informative,” she sniffed. “We
were all together only last night and not a hint of anything wrong.
What could possibly—” The countess paused, eyed her daughter with
horrified speculation. “Tell me you did not quarrel with him,
Eugenia. Surely you could not be that much of a fool.”

Malvinia, Lady Worley, was an imposing
figure of a woman who towered over most ladies of the
ton,
her personality as forceful as
her dominating size. No gray had yet crept into her rich brown
hair—although her daughter suspected the skill of her mama’s maid
might have something to say to that. Lady Worley’s features were
patrician, handsome rather than pretty; her manner, imperious. Lady
Eugenia never doubted she had acquired the independence and
fighting spirit which kept her alive on the Peninsula while
learning what it meant to be the eldest child of the Countess of
Worley. Today, however, her spirit failed her. Her backbone was as
wobbly as a
blancmange
.

“
No, mama, we did not quarrel.” This
unaccustomed meekness caused Lady Worley to stare at her daughter
in amazement. “There was, however,” Jenny ventured, “an incident
with his daughter.”

“
Daughter!” How is that possible. No
one has seen the chit in years.”

“
She was there last night, mama, at
Longville House. I encountered her, unexpectedly, in the bookroom.
She . . .” Jenny Norville Wharton hung her head. “There was a
misunderstanding. We had words.”

“
Merciful heavens,” Lady Worley moaned,
sinking onto the opposite end of the crocodile-footed settee Jenny
had found particularly revolting from the moment her mother had
purchased it. As was the sidetable nearby whose slim walnut legs
were each clutched in the grip of a climbing snake. Jenny sometimes
wondered if they were intended to represent Cleopatra’s asp. This
morning, they seemed to glare at her with a particularly malevolent
eye.

“
My dear,” her mama begged. “tell me
you are making a May game of me.”

“
Only the sad truth, I fear. I was so
overcome by jealousy I mistook her for Longville’s latest
chère amie
.”

Lady Worley’s concerned murmurs escalated
into a full-blown groan, followed by silence so profound a carriage
could be heard clattering over the cobbles outside in the Square.
“So he has truly gone off,” she said at last. “And we cannot be
certain he means to return.”

“
I think it quite possible he will wish
for me to cry off,” Jenny said.

“
Never!” Lady Worley declared, a
militant glint springing to her eyes. “You have snabbled the most
eligible
parti
in England, my
girl. He’ll not get off so easily.”

Lady Eugenia pleated the skirt of the forest
green silk morning gown she had donned in anticipation of a round
of callers wishing to discuss the elaborate dinner hosted by His
Grace, the Duke of Longville. Not to mention, of course, that she
had expected her betrothed to be among those visitors. Until his
note had been brought ’round, a note signed as impersonally as
possible—a scrawled “Longville.” Two sentences and his title, that
was all the time and effort Lady Eugenia Wharton, his betrothed,
was worth.

“
I do not wish to wed where I am not
wanted, mama.”

“
Nonsense. It happens all the time. You
married once for love, and look what it brought you. Heat and cold,
rain and snow, guns and blood,” Lady Worley emoted. “A babe born
God knows where . . . ’tis a wonder either one of you
lived.”

“
Yes,” Jen intoned, her despair reduced
to cold reality, “that’s why Longville wanted me, you know. I’m
hardy. I can bear a child. I’m not the fragile flower his first
wife was.”

It was true, of course, the countess was
forced to admit. In her own thoughts and in private moments with
her husband, she had decided this was the only possible explanation
for the Duke of Longville’s interest in a young woman who was, like
herself, a veritable Viking in stature. It was true Jenny’s
features were softer than her own—but not by much. And her dear
girl was a widow, mother of a four-year-old child. A woman with a
decisive mind of her own and a tongue that could match the
sharpness of her thoughts.

Longville, of course, might have had his pick
of any nubile young virgin in the ton. In all Britain, for that
matter. Truthfully, there was no other explanation for his odd
choice of bride. The Duke of Longville had indeed chosen Jenny
solely for her proven sturdiness and for her fertility. That was
the only explanation.

And for those very reasons, Lady Worley was
quite determined, Marcus Carlington would keep her daughter. If
necessary, Worley and Anthony would see that it was so.

Jenny sat quite still, wondering where her
much-vaunted courage had fled. Until her mother had sailed into the
room, she had been sitting there, clutching Longville’s note, for
what seemed like hours. She was thirty years old, a woman who had
always been certain of her own mind. Until last night when,
overcome by a moment of blinding jealousy, she had discovered that
she was not making the pragmatic marriage of convenience she had
expected. That her heart could be so strongly engaged was shocking.
And that immensely aggravating child had been absolutely right.
Heartbreak hovered, as surely as it had for the first Lady
Longville.

Yet on his part . . .

They had not even progressed to Christian
names. Longville had never kissed her. He was offering rank and
wealth in return for her proven fertility, her noble bloodlines,
the impeccable upbringing which would enable her to perform the
role of duchess with ease. And in an unguarded moment, at the end
of a long supremely boring family party, she had been consumed by
an explosion of jealousy so intense that she had forgotten every
last precept of her upbringing and given Longville a distaste for
her from which he was unlikely to recover. For surely the chit had
told him. How could she not?

He was such a difficult man, Marcus, Duke of
Longville. Complex. Far more than the façade with which he faced
the world. At first, he had been a challenge. Someone with whom she
could trade repartee at dinner parties, routs, and balls. And then
she had begun to find the events he did not attend sadly flat. She
had been gratified when he began to seek her out, surprised but
immensely flattered by his offer of marriage.

And yet . . . he was still “Longville,”
and to him she was “Lady Eugenia.” How could she have been foolish
enough to think he might learn to care for her? After all, his
reputation with women was legendary. Why else had his first wife
left him? And she, Eugenia Norville Wharton, widow of Captain
Gordon Wharton of the 7
^th
Royal Fusiliers—not a regiment usually associated with the
sons of Britain’s noblest families—had made a purely pragmatic
decision to marry him anyway. She was a sophisticate, a woman of
the world. She understood the blindness practiced by ladies of
the
ton
. By their husbands as
well. Or so she had thought until she caught a glimpse of a very
young woman, spectacularly beautiful, golden hair tumbling over her
nightwear, displaying herself in the duke’s bookroom at two in the
morning.