Once a Duchess (13 page)

Bensbury’s basement level had not been constructed for large men. Twice he clipped his broad shoulder on the rounded corners in his haste to discover the full measure of his family’s offense against his former wife.

At last he reached the kitchen. He pushed the door open, prepared to shout to find her in the teeming morass of servants. He came to a halt just inside the door. The room was almost silent. Where there should have been a veritable army working on preparations for tonight’s festivities, only Isabelle and one other liveried servant remained. The servant girl formed balls of dough on the counter next to the oven. Standing beside her, Isabelle chopped carrots.

Confusion tangled his thoughts. Where in the bloody hell were his servants?

He must have voiced his question out loud, for Isabelle set down her knife and looked up, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “They’ve gone.” She wiped her hands down the front of her thighs. He followed the motion with his gaze, then flicked his eyes to her face.

His bewilderment only deepened. “Gone where?”

A stableboy popped up from a chair in the corner where he was scaling a bowl of fish. “Mutiny, Your Grace!” he exclaimed dramatically. He toppled a bucket of fish scales in his enthusiasm. Flat, iridescent discs spilled out in a rainbow cascade.

“It’s my fault,” Isabelle said quietly. “Lord Grant found out I was here, and he sent the servants away, rather than permit them to cook for me.” Her chin trembled, and Marshall felt a pang of tenderness at her obvious hurt. She sniffed and raised her head, her eyes flashing defiantly. “I won’t let him punish Naomi for being kind to me,” she said. “I will fix this, Marshall. She’ll have a fine supper for her guests if I have to … cook it myself.” She laughed humorlessly and returned to her carrots.

Marshall watched her work. Her slender wrist rose and fell as the knife rhythmically made short work of the root. She reached for another. He took in the whole of her appearance. Her usually silky hair was damp. Lank strands hung beside her face and onto her back. Her white muslin was a mess — red and blue splotches stained the bodice, and something crusty stiffened the fabric on her side below her left breast. The thin material clung to her in a way her woolen dress at the George hadn’t, rendering the contours of her back clearly visible. She shivered slightly. He involuntarily pictured a bead of sweat running down her spine to the small of her back.

He had seen ladies in states of artfully composed dishabille.
This
was the effect all those women attempted to achieve, but at which they failed so miserably in comparison to Isabelle. The way her rumpled hair framed her flushed, glistening face, and the manner in which her dress clung to her curves like a second skin conspired to give her a delectably tousled appearance. He became acutely aware of his surging desire. This would not do.

He shook his head to free himself of her beguiling spell. He removed his coat and tossed it across a vacant stool. “All right, what can I do to help?”

Isabelle’s knife paused above the carrot. Her green eyes, full of disbelief, found his. At the connection of their gazes, he again had to stomp down his insidious, wayward thoughts.

“Help?” she asked incredulously.

“Yes, of course.” He removed his gold cuff links and neatly rolled the sleeves to his forearms. When he looked up, Isabelle was still staring at him as though he’d escaped from Bedlam. “I want to help,” he insisted. “You can’t prepare supper for thirty by yourself.”

“Actually, I can.” She picked up her knife and continued chopping. “If you’d be so good as to recall, I spent a period of time preparing supper for a whole inn full of patrons.”

Marshall noted the curve of her mouth as she spoke. Amazingly, her time working at the inn seemed to be a pleasant memory. He crossed his arms. “I seem to recall,” he said lightly, “waiting the better part of two hours for my supper, because the kitchen was backed up with orders.” He inclined his head pointedly, and was rewarded with a delightful blush.

“Very well.” The corners of her mouth twitched. She pointed with her knife to a pile of potatoes beside the cutting board. “You can peel these.” Her eyebrow rose over a green eye in what he took for a challenge.

He sniffed. “Fine. I’ll peel the potatoes.”

He selected an able-looking implement from the cutlery rack, pulled a stool to the counter, took a tuber in hand, and set to work. Not a minute later, the blade raked across his knuckle. “Damn,” he muttered and pressed his finger against his trousers. Beside him, Isabelle’s shoulders shook with silent laughter. He glared at her blackly. He’d faced down a line of French infantry with only a pistol and a handful of Spanish peasants — he would
not
be bested by Isabelle and her vegetables. Marshall resolutely attacked the potato. Halfway through, he drew blood again. “For God’s sake!” He slammed the knife to the counter.

Isabelle set down her knife and turned to face him, her hip resting against the counter, right at his eye level. “Anything amiss, Marshall?”

He pulled his gaze from her hip, raked it up her shapely torso, and settled on her face, which was full of knowing mirth. “Yes, as a matter of fact,” he said gravely. “I seem to be at a loss as to how best go about my appointed task.”

She smiled quickly, then masked the expression by clearing her throat. Had he not been watching closely, he would have missed it altogether.

“Your technique is all wrong, if I may say so.” She moved to stand behind him. “You shouldn’t fling the blade around like that. You’ll cut your arm off. Here.” She handed him the paring knife and the partially denuded potato.

He prepared to give it another go, and was startled by her hands lightly grazing down his arms; his muscles leapt at her touch. Isabelle wrapped her delicate fingers around his and began guiding him through the motions of peeling the potato. “If you hold your thumb firm, like this,” her voice purred against his ear, her jaw brushing against his temple, “then you can control the knife better.” Her soft warmth pressed against him and her breasts nuzzled into the nape of his neck.

“Like so, you mean?” he asked, deliberately holding his thumb at an awkward angle.

“No,” she chided with a gentle rebuke. “Like this.” She captured his wayward digit beneath hers. She smelled warm and comforting, like herbs, like home — and something else he couldn’t name, something purely Isabelle. “Do you see?” she asked. A strand of her hair tickled his ear. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, breathing her in.

“Yes,” he murmured. “I see.”

Her hands stilled over his, and then they were gone. He turned and caught a glimpse of her face a second before her back was to him and she checked the roasts in the oven. While he had a fine view of her lovely backside, it was the look on her face that had him most agitated. Her eyelids were drooped, and her lips parted, and though she had turned away from him, he knew she’d felt the same stirrings he’d experienced.

Marshall resumed peeling potatoes, but in his mind’s eye, his fingers were tangled in her hair and roving down her back and —

“Damn!” He pressed his freshly injured thumb against his pant leg.

Isabelle didn’t even turn around. “Keep your thumb out of the way,” she called, still occupied with her roasts.

All too soon, a battalion of liveried footmen lined up to receive platters of food to take to the diners on the balcony.

Isabelle had pulled off an incredible victory. Marshall watched as tray after tray of tantalizing dishes left the kitchen: turrets of cold crab bisque, asparagus in crème sauce, duck confit, venison roast accompanied by the carrots and potatoes he had prepared alongside Isabelle, and a dozen others.

She stood across the stream of servants from him, quiet pride lighting her face as she watched her supper pass. Even more incredibly, she had done all of this for his sister. In passing, he tried to picture Lucy going to such lengths for Naomi; he knew she would not.
You’re not marrying a friend for your sibling. You’re marrying a duchess.

It wasn’t as compelling an argument as it might have been that morning.

He toyed with the idea that this could have been an act of contrition on Isabelle’s part, a small way of apologizing for what her adultery had done to his family. But as he regarded her beatific smile, it became increasingly difficult for Marshall to remember she had ever wronged him. In every other instance, she had always shown herself to be a woman of character. And tonight, she had gone above and beyond anything Marshall himself had ever done on behalf of a friend. Could it be that he was mistaken about her infidelity?

Isabelle caught him looking at her. “No beef stew?” he teased.

She grinned, then, a wide, happy smile. “It’s a little warm out for that,” she replied.

Over the next few hours, Marshall oversaw dispensing the bottles from the wine cellar, while Isabelle and her two kitchen helpers kept trays mounded with food. Finally, the tarts and dessert wines went upstairs. It was over. After the sweet course, the guests would entertain themselves with cards and music until bed.

“That’s that.” Isabelle sighed happily. “Except for the dishes, of course.”

Marshall wrinkled his nose. “Dishes? At this hour?” He extracted his watch from his pocket. “It’s nearly midnight.”

She playfully tossed a small towel at him. “Time and dishes wait for no man.”

A noise from the hallway caught his attention. Marshall poked his head out the kitchen door to find his wayward kitchen staff returning from their forced day off, heading for the comfort of their beds in the servant quarters.

“Not so fast!” Marshall snapped.

Gasps and mutters of “Your Grace” swept around as curtsies and bows fell and rose again like ripples across a pond.

“Despite the abdication of your duties, there has been a supper here tonight, and now it must be cleaned up.” He fixed the assembled servants in a glacial stare. To a person, the men and women wearing his livery fidgeted under their master’s scrutiny. “Your day off is,” he consulted his watch again, “officially over. Back to work.”

He turned on a heel and strode back into the kitchen, where Isabelle was consolidating the leftover soup into a single tureen.

“Plates,” he said. “We need plates.”

“More plates?” Two shadows bruised the delicate skin under her eyes.

Marshall had not eaten since noon. When had Isabelle last eaten? Breakfast, likely. And then a long day of hard, physical work. She was exhausted.

“Who can still be hungry?” she asked wearily.

“I am,” Marshall said. “And you are. Come, let’s have our supper.”

She gave him an amenable smile and nodded. A string of newly returned servants entered the kitchen, bustling around, shouting instructions to one another and clattering pots and pans. Marshall and Isabelle worked together in a quiet little oasis to prepare their own supper tray. He went down the hall to the wine cellar and selected one of his favorites to accompany their meal. Then, he carried the laden tray while Isabelle followed behind.

Neither she nor he was in any state to mingle with company. He led her out the servant’s door and around the side of the house to the garden. Away from the balcony where the gentlemen lingered over their port and cigars, but dimly lit by the light spilling from the house, a small marble-topped table just right for two stood at the entrance to the rose garden.

He set down the tray and held a wrought iron chair for her. She took her seat and opened her napkin with a snap, as nicely as if they were sitting down to a state supper in the dining room.

He watched her eyes roam the shadowy garden with obvious delight. “This is lovely,” she finally said. She turned her face to the velvety blue-black canopy overhead. “Look how pretty the stars are tonight, even with the house all alight.”

He gave the heavens a cursory glimpse. “They’re all the prettier for being reflected in your eyes.”

Her smile faltered; her brow furrowed a fraction.

Marshall silently cursed himself. Why the hell had he said that? He sounded like some lovesick swain trying to woo a maiden, rather than the detached man he knew himself to be, sitting across the table from the woman he’d divorced. Lucy, the woman he was courting, by Jove, deserved his flattery, not Isabelle.

“I believe our efforts are telling on both of us,” Isabelle said, smoothly disregarding his outlandish compliment. She retrieved the wineglasses from the tray and turned them upright. “Would you care to pour?”

They passed their supper in companionable conversation. The food Isabelle had prepared for Naomi’s guests was delicious. Marshall regretted that their tray held only a few selections, and not the full array of dishes. He would like to have tried each and every one of her creations.

He dabbed his mouth after a bite of the duck confit. “A transient art, is it not?”

Isabelle took a sip of wine. “What’s that?”

He waved a hand, indicating the spread in front of them on the table. “Cuisine. It’s your art form, but an impermanent one.”

She tilted her head to the side. “I never considered what I do art. Everyone has to eat.”

“True, but what you create goes well beyond survival.”

Isabelle shrugged. “It is one of life’s pleasures to survive in style.”

Marshall laughed. He could not remember enjoying a woman’s company so much since — since he’d been married to Isabelle, damn it all.

They ate until only two strawberry tarts remained on the tray. Isabelle put one on a small plate to pass to Marshall, but extended her arm too quickly. The tart slid from the plate and hit the garden walk in a splatter of crumbled crust and red fruit.

She bit her lip. “Oh, dear.”

“If you think I’ve grown thick around the middle,” Marshall drawled, “you could have just said so. No sense dashing good food against the ground.”

Her face relaxed, once again at ease.

“Still,” he continued, “there’s just the one tart remaining, and as you cast mine out for the birds, I feel it’s only sporting of you to forfeit yours.”

Calmly plating the last tart, she smiled impishly. “I imagine you do. You may be dismayed, then, to learn I have no intention of giving you my sweet.” As if to reiterate the point, she forked a large bite, opened her plump lips wide, and made a rapturous noise as she tasted the tart. “One of my better crusts,” she said around her mouthful. “Flaky, tender, and those berries.” She swallowed. “Your Grace, I really must commend you. Your strawberries are divine.”