How To Distract a Duchess (5 page)

Just because he wasn’t quite of age yet, his stepmother, who was really only a few years older than he, held the purse strings.

Correction
, he told himself.
Her guard dog, Mr. Beddington, controls Southwycke’s coffers.
Of course, he had the title. No one could keep that from him, but thanks to the terms of his dearly departed father’s will, they kept Felix on a short leash.

A damned short leash.

Well, that would change with time. But not soon enough to suit Felix. Hellfire, he couldn’t even get Beddington to agree to discuss the wholly inadequate size of his piddling allowance. Everything came down from on high through the great man’s assistant Mr. Shipwash or Felix’s not-so-great stepmother.

“As if Beddington was bloody Moses on Mt. Sinai,” Felix slurred. He caught a toe on a paving stone and nearly plunged face down on the path.

His stomach heaved uncertainly, and he hoped he’d make it to his suite without being sick in public. On second thought, what did he care? The servants needed something to clean up in any case.

Felix emptied his belly behind the hydrangea and felt slightly better for it. His head was beginning to pound, and his mouth tasted like a band of gypsies had danced over his tongue. Barefoot.

Drink wasn’t entirely to blame for his malaise. Dame Fortune had been cruel to him at the whist tables of late, and Felix didn’t have the guineas to pay up.

Didn’t Beddington understand a man had to honor his debts?

If Felix had been unlucky at cards, at least he’d been fortunate in his creditors. Amazingly, Lubov and Oranskiy, the visiting Russians holding his markers, were willing to forgive his losses if only he’d do them one teeny, tiny favor.

Put them in touch with Mr. Beddington.

It was a simple enough request. After all, shouldn’t a mere man of trade hop to when summoned by a peer of the realm?

However, nothing was simple when it involved Beddington. Felix was sick and tired of having his wishes ignored. He didn’t care that Beddington had taken Southwycke’s dwindling resources and turned the estate into one of the most prosperous in the Empire. His aloof manner was downright insulting. The man was beyond impudent. As soon as Felix took his full inheritance, his first official act would be to sack Beddington.

But his birthday was months away, and he had the sneaking suspicion that Lubov and Oranskiy might turn out to be much less pleasant if he couldn’t deliver the estate’s trustee to them.

Felix had no idea why they wanted Beddington. In truth, he didn’t care.

He only knew he had to flush the reclusive Mr. Beddington into the open.

And soon.

* * *

Artemisia nearly tripped over her stepson’s body on her way to the garden. Her nose twitched delicately at the alcoholic fumes rising from his prone form. She could almost hear Cuthbert declaiming that it was “bad form to be found snoring off a debauch in one’s garden instead of one’s bed.”

Artemisia sighed and stepped over Felix, satisfied he’d come to no more harm than a crooked neck from sleeping on cold stone. Further on the path, she met Naresh, her father’s Indian servant. Naresh and his wife Rania, Artemisia’s
ayah
, had left their sun-drenched home and followed the Dalrymples to the soggy British island out of loyalty to Angus. If ever they regretted their decision, Artemisia had yet to hear them complain.
  

“Good morning, Larla,” Naresh said, templing his fingers in a graceful greeting. He always used Artemisia’s ‘milk name’ instead of her Christian one. It made no difference to Naresh and Rania that Artemisia was a duchess and should be considered a grand, if unconventional, lady. To the humble Indian couple, she would always be Larla, the first round little white baby they’d cosseted and adored.

“Is my father in the garden?”

“Oah, yes, by Jove. He is gardening fit to wake the dead,” Naresh intoned in his singsong English. “He is sending me to fetch a vase for his roses.”

“But the roses are well past their prime,” Artemisia said with despair. “He’s delusional, isn’t he?”

“Do not let your heart be troubling. Seeing roses where there are no roses is no bad thing. Would you rather he was seeing thorns?” Naresh asked philosophically. “He is calling me by name, and I am thinking he will know yours as well. The master, he is having a good day today.”

“Well, Southwycke’s future master is not,” Artemisia said with disgust. “Felix is passed out on the path again. Please see if you can rouse his valet and put him to bed.”

“As you wish.”

Artemisia continued on in the pale early light. Southwycke’s garden was not fashioned after the popular French style, each blade of grass and leaf neatly manicured. This garden grew in unruly profusion. Most of Artemisia’s visitors considered it an untidy mess, but she loved it. The rampant growth reminded her ever so slightly of the thick jungles of India, where one never knew if the next bend in the path would reveal a vine-encrusted abandoned temple or a troop of monkeys screaming through the canopy overhead.

Artemisia heard her father before she saw him.

“Fetch me those pruning shears. Lively now, there’s a good lad.”

She covered her mouth in despair. Angus surely must know he’d sent Naresh away. He’d fallen to talking to himself now. Even if the words made sense in a garden, the world generally frowned upon speaking to thin air.

Then Artemisia’s ears pricked to another voice. Her father wasn’t alone, after all. But who could be with him this early?

She peered around a large clump of pampas grass to see who had invaded her garden.

Bold as brass, Thomas Doverspike strolled over to her father and handed him the set of shears he requested.

What on earth was he doing here? She’d told him to come early, but not at the peep of dawn. And she certainly didn’t want him troubling her father.

“Thankee kindly,” Angus said. “Now just ye hold this stem still while I nip the bugger off. Got to trim it just so or the vine will run wild.”

When Mr. Doverspike did as her father bid, Artemisia was surprised by the sudden warmth in her chest. Perhaps there was some good in the fellow, after all, if he could take time for her poor confused father. Their heads were bent conspiratorially, the dark hair and the balding pate, hunkered close together. Mr. Doverspike was saying something, but Artemisia couldn’t quite make it out. She edged nearer without leaving the shelter of the decorative grasses.

“ . . . and so if I should say to you, ‘The tigress feeds by moonlight.’” Mr. Doverspike’s tone trended up, turning the statement into a question.

Artemisia’s father jerked his head toward the younger man and straightened his arthritic back. “Why, I should say, ‘But the bear feeds whenever it may.’” Angus Dalrymple laughed as if he’d just uttered the greatest witticism in the world and clapped his grubby hand on Mr. Doverspike’s broad shoulder. “But it’s up to men like us to make sure the bear don’t feed at all, eh?”

“Yes, quite,” Thomas Doverspike agreed, as if their disjointed conversation about wild beasts made perfect sense. “But to do that, I need the key.”

The key to what?
Artemisia wondered. The manor house? The duke’s strongbox? Good Lord, was the man intending to rob them while they slept?

“Didn’t ye get my message? I don’t have it.” Angus scratched to top of his freckled bare head. “Ye want Mr. Beddington. That’s the ticket.”

Beddington?
The last thing she wanted was for her father to steer this stranger even more toward Mr. Beddington. And what was this nonsense about a message? She’d only met Thomas Doverspike yesterday herself. Her father couldn’t have sent a message to a man none of them knew. Angus Dalrymple was sliding further into the dementia the doctor warned them was only going to worsen with the passage of time.

And he certainly didn’t need someone like Thomas Doverspike giving him a push down that dark road by playing along with his delusional games.

“Mr. Doverspike, a word with you.” Artemisia pushed through the decorative grass like a lioness springing on an unsuspecting gazelle.

Her father turned his pale blue gaze on her and smiled, his face a wreath of wrinkles. Constance had wanted to confine him to Bedlam, but Artemisia wouldn’t hear of it. The conditions at the hospital for the insane were deplorable. As long as her father didn’t do himself or others any harm, she would see him cared for at home.

“Larla, me heart. Give the auld man a kiss, then.” His Scottish accent always deepened when he was feeling sentimental.

She gave him a dutiful peck on the cheek and continued to glare at Mr. Doverspike.

“So ye already know Tommy-boy, here, do ye? Weel, that’s grand, then, isn’t it?” Angus said genially, then turned back to Doverspike. “How did ye happen to meet me Larla?”

‘Tommy-boy’ dipped in that infuriatingly smooth bow of his, one brow arched in amusement. Artemisia’s face felt so hot, she wondered why steam wasn’t leaking from her ears.

“Larla?” Mr. Doverspike said quizzically. “That name is a
 
right puzzlement, guv. I only know the lady as Her Grace, the Duchess of Southwycke.”

“Weel, we can fix that right now. Doverspike, this is me firstborn and the apple of me eye, Larla Dalrymple. Her mother gave her the name Artemisia-after her father Artie Campbell, ye ken—and old Theodore Pelham-Smythe pitched in the duchess part . . . haven’t seen him around much of late, have I?” Angus paused and worried his bottom lip for a moment. Then he shrugged off the mystery. “But to me she’ll always be me Larla. Won’t ye, sweeting?”

Her father slipped his arm around her waist and tugged her close to plant a dry kiss on her temple. Gently, she disengaged herself. Her family relationships were not fodder for the likes of Thomas Doverspike. Especially since now she was convinced he must be a reporter of some ilk trying to learn more of the family’s intimate secrets. To trade on her father’s misfortune—truly, members of the press had no shame.

“Father, Naresh will be back to help you momentarily. Mr. Doverspike and I have some business to discuss,” she said with a pointed glance that dared him to dispute her word. “We haven’t time for pleasantries just now.”

“Och, and more’s the pity.” Angus shook his balding head. “If ye haven’t time, ye haven’t anything.”

“Very wise,” Mr. Doverspike said with a mischievous glance at Artemisia. Did the man just wink at her? “I suspect you are a philosopher of sorts, Mr. Dalrymple.”

“Angus, son. I’m too old to stand on ceremony. Call me Angus.” He waved them off. “Hurry on with yourselves then. Only mind the python on the path as ye go.”

Python, indeed.
Artemisia shook her head. The only snake in this garden was the unconscious Felix.

And possibly the mysterious Mr. Doverspike.

Artemisia was relieved to see that Naresh had collected her stepson and bundled him off to his bed before Mr. Doverspike had the pleasure of seeing a future peer foxed out of his mind.

Doverspike followed closely behind her, humming a tune she didn’t recognize. Probably a shockingly ribald drinking song, but at least it allowed her to know he was there.

Once on a tiger hunt, Naresh told her that wild creatures had a sixth sense that allowed them to feel when eyes were upon them. Was Thomas Doverspike’s dark gaze focused on her right now, probing her secrets, looking for a point of weakness? A delicious shiver tickled down her spine and settled at its base.

This will never do.

She stopped, turned back suddenly and bumped right into him. He reached out to catch her as she tottered. Her whole body was pressed tight against him. Dressed
en dishabille
as she was, without stays and whalebone to buttress her form, she could feel every solid plane of him. The broad expanse of his chest, his tight, flat abdomen, even his muscular thighs, and his . . .

Artemisia gulped as she realized what other part of Mr. Doverspike became suddenly rock hard.

“He’s right, you know.” His voice was a low rumble, like the purr of a full-grown tiger. He smelled of the wild, too—all wood smoke and fresh clippings and green growing things. “He’s absolutely right.”

Who is? Artemisia wanted to ask, but the words got hung up in her throat. She didn’t trust herself to speak for fear an unruly shiver would slip out with her words.

“‘If we haven’t time, we haven’t anything.’” He studied her face with unhurried absorption, making no move to release her as he ought.

 
It was one thing to reach out to catch her when she was in danger of losing her balance, but it really was positively indecent the way he was holding her now—so close she could feel his heartbeat, feel her own quickening into the same racing rhythm.

A woman could sink into those dark eyes and never be heard from again.
Artemisia felt herself begin to tumble into them. If she tilted her head, he might very well kiss her.

This will most certainly never do.

Artemisia shoved against his chest, and he released her immediately. She stomped away from him toward the house.

“You’re wrong, Mr. Doverspike,” she called over her shoulder. “For some things, there is not enough time in the world.”