How To Distract a Duchess (14 page)

“All of them,” she promised.

“Don’t know what’s got your mother’s knickers in a knot, but she’s in a great
stramash
,” Angus muttered to Artemisia as they walked arm in arm toward the ballroom. The gas-lit corridor was lined with revelers. His rheumy eyes darted from one masked face to the next. “Too many hungry people in the house. Who let them all in? Where’s that Naresh? He should know better than to let so many beggars in at once. We can’t bloody well feed all England.”

“Hush, Father,” she whispered. “It’s a party for Delia and Florinda. These people are our guests.”

“A party? Weel, that’s different then. For the girls, ye say? Anything for me lambkins, ye know that. But these guests do seem a wee bit odd, do they no’?” Between one step and the next, her father transformed into a magnanimous host. He slapped a hand on the back of a medieval knight. “Are ye enjoying yourself, then, me fine sir?”

Artemisia found Naresh serving by the punch bowl and waved him over. The slim, elegant Indian was dressed all in white with a purple plume tucked into his tall turban.

“Keep Father out of mischief, please,” she said to Naresh softly.

“That had been my every intention this night, but your lady mother set me to work serving the drinks.” Naresh inclined his head toward the circle of tittering matrons. Constance Dalrymple was holding court in the center of their fluttering fans. “She has an announcement she will wish to be making and I’m thinking it must be a terrible one. All her guests must have a drink in hand to bear the hearing of it.”

“No, Naresh, it’s something that requires celebration,” Artemisia explained. “She’ll be calling for a toast.”

Delia’s match with Lord Shrewsbury’s son must have been finalized. Constance Dalrymple couldn’t wait for the banns to be read to announce the upcoming nuptials to the cream of the
ton
. Her mother must be delirious with joy.

Artemisia couldn’t begrudge her this moment. Especially since Constance didn’t know her hopes for Florinda and Trevelyn Deveridge were in utter ruins. Surely there was another cash-poor eligible bachelor with aristocratic connections who would accept a nabob’s daughter. It was better than slogging along in threadbare gentility. Artemisia would set James Shipwash on the hunt first thing Monday morning.

Across the room, her mother swept toward the musicians like a stately galleon, the crowd parting before her in anticipation. She leaned to whisper to the first violinist, who acknowledged her by tipping forward at the waist in a stiff, seated bow. He sped up the last rondo and finished the piece with a bravura flourish.

The crowd clapped politely.

“Thank you, my friends,” Constance Dalrymple said as if the ovation was for her. Her color was high, even accounting for the extra paint she was wearing, and her eyes over-bright. “My daughter, Her Grace the Duchess of Southwycke, thanks you for further ennobling her home with your presence. If I could find her in this press, no doubt she’d be delivering this news, but unfortunately, during a masquerade people are sometimes misplaced.”

There was smattering of giggles. Part of the unspoken rules of a masked ball was that just as identities were temporarily lost, so one might lose one’s inhibitions. Hadn’t Artemisia proven that in those torrid moments with Trev? She wondered how many of her guests had availed themselves of the garden or wandered into one of the great house’s many empty rooms in search of the same wanton pleasure. She shifted uneasily. The drumbeat low in her belly had yet to be silenced and she fancied she caught a whiff of muskiness mixing with the scent of violets swirling about her person.
  

“At any rate,” her mother went on, “I have the most exciting news to share. My daughter Delia has just accepted the suit of Baron Malcolm Cholmondley, son of Viscount Shrewsbury.”

No, the Viscount has accepted the fact that from now on Father’s money will be settling his son’s markers at every gaming hell in London. But Delia will have a title, bought and paid for,
Artemisia amended grimly to herself. She doubted there was much point in trying to encourage her future brother-in-law to more prudent behavior, even once the knot was firmly tied.

A rustle of conditional approval, mixed with ill-concealed annoyance, fluttered around the room as the crowd digested Constance’s news. Some society matrons already thought the daughters Dalrymple had bagged more than their share of the nobility with Artemisia’s dearly departed duke. Now Constance could add a baron to her list of Season trophies.

“Oh, but that’s not all! The Earl of Warre wishes to address you as well.” Constance dipped in a low curtsey as a tall, straight-backed gentleman approached.

Lord Warre was dressed as a Moldavian prince resplendent in a red satin-lined cape. He removed his domino and flashed a fine set of teeth to the assembly. With his iron gray hair and snapping dark eyes, he still cut a dashing figure despite his years. In the strong lines of his features, Artemisia recognized the bone-deep attractiveness echoed in Trevelyn. Her chest constricted.

What in the world might his Lordship have to say to this gathering of revelers?

“As most of you know, my son and heir, Theobald Deveridge, has been happily married for several years,” his Lordship began. Artemisia’s gut twisted with foreboding. “However, I’ve yet to see my second son suitably shackled with the bonds of matrimony.”

Polite laughter greeted this obvious tongue-in-cheek remark.

“But tonight, I have the privilege to formally announce the betrothal of my son Trevelyn to Miss Florinda Dalrymple. I know you will all join me in a toast wishing them every happiness.”

The distinguished gent lifted his fluted wineglass and the rest of the company followed suit.

Artemisia was nearly sick on the spot. She knew Florinda would do her mother’s bidding, no matter what, but how could they have announced this without Trevelyn’s knowledge?

There was only one explanation.

He knew.

It was the only thing that made sense. Young women were bartered away like pawns on a chessboard every day, but a man did not wed without his consent. In her mind, she ran through their brief conversation in the studio, before his honeyed words and sinfully delicious kisses turned her body into his willing ally. When she’d accused him of spying on the family he intended on marrying into, he’d feigned ignorance. But she realized now he’d offered no denial.

Even though Trev was bound to marry her sister, he’d still nearly succeeded in seducing her. If not for her father’s unwitting intervention, her ruin would have been complete. How could she have been so stupid?

She saw him then on the far side of the crowded room, standing silhouetted in the dark doorway, like a fallen angel up from the pit, intent on dragging the unwary down with him. He turned his masked face toward her.

Bile rose in the back of her throat as she fled the crowded ballroom.

Early the next morning, Trevelyn burst into his father’s walnut-lined study without bothering to knock. The family’s solicitor, Mr. Weatherby, startled at the interruption and cringed back into the red leather wing-chair.
   

“Good morning, son,” his father said in his usual unflappable style. “You’re up rather early for someone who didn’t make it home before dawn.”

Trevelyn hadn’t dared come home earlier for fear of losing control and throttling his sire.

“Father, I need to speak with you.” He labored to keep his tone civil. “Now.”

Mr. Weatherby gathered up his sheaf of paper and stuffed it into his brief case. “We can continue this at a more opportune time, my lord.”

“Nonsense,” the earl said. “Whatever my son has to say to me can be said in your hearing. What has taken possession of you, Trevelyn? You seem to have completely forgotten what little manners you have. Your behavior at the home of Southwycke last night was unconscionable. You might at least have stayed long enough to accept congratulations from the other guests on your impending marriage.”

Trevelyn clenched his teeth and clasped his hands behind his back. The urge to hit something—or someone—was so strong, he didn’t trust himself to let his arms dangle at his sides. Trev’s eyes burned in their sockets.

Mr. Weatherby turned a sickly shade of green. “Really, my lord, I should give you two a moment—”

“Mr. Weatherby is correct. When you hear what I have to say, I think you will also prefer this conversation be private,” Trevelyn said.

The solicitor scrambled to his feet, ready to beat a hasty retreat.

“Sit down, Weatherby. You and I haven’t concluded our business yet, and I have no intention of postponing necessary proceedings for my son’s frivolities.”

Mr. Weatherby sank into the chair and pressed himself into the leather like a rabbit going to ground, caught between two terriers.

“Trust me, Father,” he said. “I’m feeling anything but frivolous.”

“Well, out with it, then. We haven’t all day. Unlike slackers with no livelihoods, Mr. Weatherby and I have work to do,” Lord Warre said with undisguised contempt.

“Very well. You were warned,” Trevelyn said, taking a deep breath. “You, sir, are a bastard.”

Mr. Weatherby looked as if he’d just swallowed a herring whole. Lord Warre’s mouth twitched almost imperceptively, but otherwise he showed no reaction.

“I assume,” the earl said, “this has something to do with your betrothal.”

“There is no betrothal and you know it.” Trevelyn tightened his fists. The impulse to knock that smug look off his father’s face was almost irresistible. “I’ve barely spoken three words to the Dalrymple chit. You do not have the power to force me to wed.”

“That’s where you are mistaken,” his father said. “I have it on good authority that you did more than say three words to the girl. You were seen entering the same room a daughter of Angus Dalrymple had just ducked into. The two of you were alone for a goodly length of time, quite long enough for her to be thoroughly compromised, or you’re no son of mine.”

“But that was—“ Trevelyn bit off the words. Obviously, his father’s informant didn’t stipulate which Dalrymple daughter was with him un-chaperoned. Trev wouldn’t brush Artemisia with the taint of scandal by naming her.

“You brought this on yourself through carelessness.” Lord Warre’s voice took on the conciliatory tone Trev recognized as the one his father used when he was lulling a member of an opposing party into complacency. Usually, just before the earl hoodwinked his unwary adversary completely. “If it had been an opera dancer or some light-heeled doxy, I’d look the other way. But a virgin with aristocratic connections—“

“You mean a father with deep pockets,” Trev said bitterly.

“There’s no need to be vulgar.” The earl tugged his waistcoat down. “When the girl’s mother told me her daughter was missing and you were also, it was incumbent upon me to see that you do the right thing.”

“Father, you wouldn’t know the right thing if it bit you on the ass.”

The earl raised his hands in frustration to Mr. Weatherby as if to say ‘You see what I must endure,’ and then looked back at Trevelyn.

“You are nearly thirty years old.” His father raised an aristocratic hand and ticked off Trevelyn’s faults on his slim fingers. “You resigned your commission. Politics hold no interest for you. The world of trade is obviously not suitable for a Deveridge. You are clearly not cut out to be a man of the cloth. You have no purpose, no sense of yourself, son. A wife steadies a man, helps him find his place in the world. I would not be the man I am today if not for your mother.”
 

“Perhaps with a wife of one’s own choosing that would be true,” Trev conceded, wondering for the first time what the duchess would say if he offered to make her his wife instead of his mistress. The duchess didn’t seem the type to turn into a biddable spouse. She’d probably give him that direct stare of hers and announce as she did when she first met him that he ‘wouldn’t do at all.’

Trev also wondered if his hard-edged father might have been a much different man had his wife lived longer. Trevelyn’s mother had died when he and his brother were six, trying to bring their stillborn sister into the world. She might have brought some softness to Lord Warre and acted as a buffer between him and their sons. But she left her men too early. Pain over her parting set them at odds with each other in a caustic circle with no end.

“I have not compromised Miss Dalrymple,” Trevelyn insisted. “And I will not marry her.”

“Then you leave me no choice.” The Earl of Warre rose majestically to his full height, forced to look up slightly to meet Trevelyn’s gaze. “If you blacken the family name by refusing to honor my troth, I will cut you off, sir. Not a penny. Not a roof to shelter beneath. Not so much as a cup of broth will come to you from me or those who serve me. You will be dead to me. Your brother Theobald will be my only son.”

Trev held his father’s unblinking gaze for the space of several heartbeats.

“So be it.” He turned on his heel and strode to the door. He stopped under the lintel and looked back at the earl. His father hadn’t moved a muscle, but Trev thought he appeared suddenly much older. If he could only tell his father, if the earl knew the true nature of the work in which Trevelyn was engaged, perhaps he’d think better of his youngest son.