Barbara Metzger (20 page)

Now Ware didn’t have to worry about any bitter taste in his mouth or any champagne going flat. He wasn’t going to be able to eat anything for a week. And he wasn’t going to have to fret over spending so much time with the twins, either, for Graceanne hired the man while His Grace was unconscious, to be the boys’ mentor and her personal servant.

She also explained to Rawley about the baby and her sister, and how the duke didn’t trust her. Rawley wished he’d hit the makebait harder.

So Graceanne had a loyal friend, and Ware had a malevolent giant on his payroll, one who was idolized by the duke’s own wards. Resting in bed with an ice pack on his jaw, Leland decided he really had to do something about finding himself a life. A wife, he meant, a wife.

Chapter Twenty-One

They said Miss Eleanor Ridgemont had three offers her first season, two her second. This was her third, however, and if she didn’t settle soon, the gossip went, she’d be on the shelf, Diamond of the first water or not. They said she was holding out for a better offer, a higher title, a heavier purse…or true love. They shook their heads.

The reigning Toast was certainly exquisite, tall and stately, raven-haired and alabaster-skinned. She was the daughter of an earl, an heiress in her own right, a talented watercolorist, and a graceful dancer. In other words, she’d make the Duke of Ware a perfect duchess. She’d not find a higher tide, since Prinny preferred older women, and few unwed gentlemen in town had deeper pockets. As for true love…Leland shook his head. If she was that much of a peagoose, he didn’t want to marry her anyway.

As September gave way to the opening of Almack’s, the galas at the theater, and the endless private balls of the fall Season, His Grace had given serious consideration to finding himself a wife.

Between Rawley, Nanny, and Grace, he hardly got to spend time with the twins. He got reports from their tutor, of course, and brief onslaughts of boyish enthusiasm when the twins were between jaunts with their uncle Rawley, or when the sergeant was temporarily out of the gruesome war stories on which Willy and Les seemed to thrive. And Leland did make a practice of visiting the nursery after the children’s supper when his schedule permitted, after Rawley was gone for the day and before Graceanne came to read stories and tuck them in. Nanny Sprockett smiled over her knitting as the boys related the tricks Uncle Rawley was helping them teach the ponies, and the steam engine Uncle Rawley had taken them to see, the battles he reenacted for them with the tin soldiers. Leland wasn’t smiling. He may be spending more time with the twins than the average father of the haut monde, but by no stretch of the imagination could he convince himself he was actually raising them.

Not that he was complaining about their upbringing, and not that his complaining would do much good, after he’d promised Grace she could hire her own servants. It was natural Tony’s children should be army mad, especially with a bigger-than-life warrior in their midst. After all, Leland couldn’t expect them to be interested in land management or the workings of Parliament, things his own sons would need to know. When he had sons of his own.

The widow was finding her feet, too. She’d hired a middle-aged abigail, unexceptional according to Milsom, and was dressing more like a comfortably circumstanced officer’s relict and less like a ragpicker, although still in those infernal, hypocritical blacks. She was going about with Aunt Eudora to afternoon teas, musicales, and the like, nothing out of keeping with her mourning period, but she was getting to meet society’s old tabbies. She was passing their inspection, too, Aunt Eudora reported, except for a few raised eyebrows when the infant was brought forth at Ware House at-home days.

She was back to doing charitable work, he heard from Olmstead. Milsom and Nanny Sprocket had dissuaded her from volunteering at the foundling home, where she was too liable to bring infectious diseases back to the children. So Grace and Rawley and her abigail visited a veterans’ hospital mornings when the boys were at their lessons. She wrote letters for the men or read to them, while her abigail did their mending and Rawley gleaned more barbaric tales to fill the twins’ heads with gore. “An estimable female,” Mr. Olmstead declared, which was high praise indeed from that noted misogynist.

So it was Leland who found himself at loose ends in his own venue. The parties were stale, his friends’ conversations flat, the wagers and dares puerile, and the current crop of birds of paradise held all the appeal of plucked chickens. Every time he thought of taking one of the actresses or opera dancers back to her rooms, he saw Graceanne’s lovely, sad face. She might have a child out of wedlock, that look seemed to say, but she was still a vicar’s daughter. The rumors and gossip of his every move still shocked her, confound the woman.

Then, too, he heard some of the whispers. Not to his face, of course, but when his back was turned at a race meet or in a theater box. It seemed Aunt Eudora wasn’t the only one to suppose a reputed rakehell like Ware was dallying with his cousin’s pretty widow. See how he doted on those twins? There was even a bet on the books at White’s that a certain duke would be pushing a perambulator in the park next. When hell froze over!

He kept even more distance between himself, the widow, and the infant, to dilute the scandal broth. He did it for her sake, Leland convinced himself, and his wards’, so they wouldn’t grow up having to defend their mother’s honor. That was another reason for him to marry, if he needed another one: to end the rumor-mongering about Mrs. Warrington.

So he watched and he listened. He spent all of October propping up columns at debutante balls, playing whist for chicken stakes at Almack’s, meanwhile scrutinizing the current harvest of Quality daughters. Miss Eleanor Ridgemont was definitely the cream of that crop.

Leland wasn’t about to rush his fences, however, not after the disasters of his first two marriages. He wanted to know Miss Ridgemont’s attitude toward child-rearing, child-bearing, and country living. Even Willy could have told him what a clunch he was being. Miss Ridgemont felt just as she ought, which was however the rich, handsome Duke of Ware wanted her to feel. Until she snabbled him, at least.

In an effort to get to know the black-haired beauty better, Ware invited her for a drive in the park. In order to get the duke to come up to scratch, Miss Ridgemont was dressed in her most becoming day gown, which was too thin for a brisk afternoon in an open carriage even if it was only early November, too narrow in the skirt to allow her a graceful ascent and descent, and too low cut to permit Ware’s eyes to wander toward any other female.

Ware was indeed absorbed between watching his mettlesome cattle and watching her chest take on a bluish tinge. He did manage to spot two small figures in the distance, though.

“My wards,” he told her, happy that she’d get to meet them so soon. The boys were on their ponies, with Rawley right behind them on a huge rawboned gray, the dog trailing behind. Leland turned his pair in their direction.

“Oh, but we mustn’t leave the carriageway,” Miss Ridgemont protested. “My reputation, you know.” She batted her long black eyelashes, all but daring him to sweep her behind a bush and steal a kiss.

Instead, he told her not to worry, his tiger was up behind them for propriety. He did notice that at least the chit didn’t seem averse to lovemaking. A cold wife would not suit his purposes at all. A shawl, he was pleased to note, would fix Miss Ridgemont’s temporary discomfort. He offered the carriage blanket in the meantime. Eleanor gritted her teeth and declined.

When the boys saw him, they waved and shouted for Cousin Leland to come watch them put their ponies through their paces. How could he refuse? He pulled up next to the sergeant, and his tiger jumped down to go to the horses’ heads.

“Will you get down, Miss Ridgemont?” the duke offered, climbing out of the curricle before she could protest.

Eleanor hadn’t come to the park to be ogled by a hulking manservant and a grinning tiger. She’d accepted Ware’s invitation so everyone could see she was fair on her way to making the match of the Season. “It really is quite chilly, Your Grace. I don’t know what I was thinking when I chose this gown.” She tugged the neckline a smidgen higher.

So he shrugged off his greatcoat and tossed it over her shoulders. Then the duke left her alone in the carriage to go watch some children ride in circles. Worse, she wasn’t alone for long when the dog decided to join her, to make friends. The coziest Eleanor Ridgemont ever got with an animal was when she wore furs. She screamed, which caused one of the ponies to miss its footing. Luckily no harm befell Les, though Leland was there in a flash, ready to catch him. Rawley had more confidence in his lads, so when he came to order the dog out of the curricle, he just frowned in disgust at the bit of fluff His Grace was driving about.

The children had to go, Eleanor decided. This fascination Ware had with the infantry was unbecoming. In truth, identical twins might make charming pageboys, quite the amusing novelty, but as the duke’s wards? She’d have them sent away to school before they could spell Jack Rabbit. As for the servant, it was the outside of enough for Miss Ridgemont to be scowled at by a great lunk of a lackey—and a repulsive cripple to boot. She’d get rid of him quickly enough, as soon as Ware returned to the curricle and took up the ribbons, in fact.

First she had to suffer an introduction to the brats. Ware led them over on their ponies. “Miss Ridgemont, may I present my wards. This is Wellesley, and the other handsome chap is Leslie.”

She nodded her head fractionally, but the children nearly fell off their ponies, laughing. Ware looked confused; there was Willy up on his Patches, Les on his Peaches. Anyone could tell the ponies apart.

“A good rider has to sit more’n one horse,” Rawley explained with a sly grin at Ware’s discomfiture in front of his ladybird, “so I switch ’em off, Your Grace. Do you mean you couldn’t tell?”

“Insolent bastard,” Ware muttered as he gave his tiger the nod to release the horses.

That was just the opening Eleanor needed. “Precisely, Your Grace. That man insulted me with an insolent look.”

Leland rubbed his oft-aching jaw. “Be happy a look was all he gave you.”

“And he should have kept better care of that vicious dog.”

“Duke? There’s never been a sweeter-natured dog, unless you threaten the children. It was my fault for not warning you. I beg your pardon, my dear, that you were frightened.”

Only partially mollified by his handsome apology, Eleanor persisted: “But the man has one hand!”

“Yes, otherwise he’d still be with the army, so I suppose we are lucky. He was the boys’ father’s batman, you see.” He rubbed his jaw again. “Almost fanatical in his devotion, actually.”

Eleanor was nothing if not determined. “But he obviously cannot manage two active children with that…that hook.”

“Oh, he threatens to disembowel them with it if they misbehave. Works every time.”

Now Miss Ridgemont’s alabaster skin took on a greenish cast instead of blue. Leland wondered if she was sensitive or merely squeamish. He couldn’t help but compare her attitude to Graceanne’s, who spent her free time visiting wounded and maimed soldiers.

He didn’t want a Lady Bountiful, Leland told himself, he wanted a duchess, an aristocrat. Miss Ridgemont was definitely that.

* * *

So His Grace was courting Eleanor the Iceberg, was he? If that was the type of woman Ware was going to install as his wife, Graceanne wanted to be elsewhere. She refused to contemplate why the thought of his bringing home a wife, any wife, gave her the dismals. But
this
prospective duchess was known to be particular in the extreme. And Graceanne had another bone to pick with the nodcock who put on his own blinders.

Once more she knocked on his library’s door. This time she carried ammunition. Nina.

“Your Grace, you have not fulfilled our agreement.”

Eyeing the bundle in her arms with misgivings, Leland put down his newspaper. “What agreement was that, Mrs. Warrington?”

“You swore to treat all my children equally.”

He frowned. A lesser person would have fled. “A cheap trick, ma’am. A vow gained by dishonorable means is worthless.”

“And is it worthless to Antonia to know some love and affection when she sees her brothers receiving it? Is she supposed to grow up thinking she is inferior because you are too enamored of your own deluded sense of honor to accept her as a person in her own right? I do not wish her to grow up in a cold, unloving household.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“That you let us, the boys and Nina and myself, find a cottage in the country somewhere on our own, where you won’t have to be reminded of us and our supposed sins.”

“No!” he shouted. That was all.

That was it? No explanation? He was even more pigheaded than Graceanne thought. “May I remind you that your actions—or nonactions—toward Nina are branding this innocent child precisely what we have been at pains to avoid. The servants are talking that you don’t treat her as a beloved cousin. Soon the
ton
will be spreading their gossip. Then what?”

Blast it, she was right, Leland acknowledged. “If I let you run off to the country, the rumors will have you exiled from polite company. So what am I supposed to do?”

“You could try being the doting guardian to Nina that you are to the boys. Here.”

What he knew was coming came: an armful, nay, a handful, of wriggling infant. Confound the woman.

“It’s been months since you’ve so much as held her.” Graceanne folded back a corner of the blanket so he could see the child better. “See how far she’s come?”

Reluctantly he looked down, straight into blue eyes the color of tropical seas, Graceanne’s blue eyes. And a smile. Wet and gummy, but a smile for all that. Lud, he must have traded his soul to win a smile like that, for he had no will of his own. “Do you think she’ll be happier in the country, then?”

“I think the air is cleaner and the food is fresher. And I’d like to show her to my mother.”

Who had red hair once, Leland reminded himself. By George, the infant—no, he had to start calling her by name, Nina—was going to be a beauty. She was still tiny, but now she was rounded, with dimples. She even had dimples on those tiny hands reaching out to grab his neckcloth and put it in her mouth. He’d be fighting off her suitors with an ax. No, pistols. One in each hand. Just let some bounder try to get near her.

Of course, she still wasn’t the sturdiest-looking thing he’d ever seen. Maybe the London fog was affecting her lungs.

“Actually,” he said, “I have been thinking about a house party at Warefield over the holidays.” He’d been thinking for about twenty seconds.