The Duke (4 page)

“C
ousin Percy is so very handsome, don't ye think so, Brandy? Did ye see his beautiful waistcoat, all lovely flowers on a yellow background? And his trousers, all knitted and tight, and he has such fine legs. He's so manly, I can't take my eyes off him when he walks. I think he looks delicious.”

Connie had noticed Percy's legs? She'd watched him walk? He was manly? Good God, this was beyond what she'd imagined. What did Connie—only sixteen—know about men's legs? But Brandy knew the answer to that. She'd known that her sister practiced in front of her mirror—smiles, slight frowns, little turn-ups of her lips. Things to entice a man. Things to entice a philanderer like Percy. Oh, Lord.

She smiled and shrugged. “Nay, I don't think Percy is handsome. Food is delicious, not some trollop man.”

“Only women are trollops, Brandy, not men.”

“Percy's a trollop. Trust me. What he is isn't all that good, Connie. He doesn't care for any of us, he cares only for himself. He isn't a nice man, Connie, please believe me.” Brandy paused a moment, realizing she'd never before spoken in such a clean-to-the-bone way before. Please, God, let her see him for what he is. “Connie, please, promise me ye'll stay away from Percy. He isn't worthy. Besides, he's our
cousin. Shake his hand but don't think about his legs in knit trousers. Don't think he's manly. Just look at him and know he's a trollop.” Why couldn't Connie see that Percy wasn't to be trusted, that he was a miserable libertine who cared for nobody but himself?

Constance fluttered thick, dark lashes, beautiful lashes, and on this particular girl of sixteen those beautiful lashes were unfortunate. She'd even learned how to look up through her lashes to achieve the greatest effect. Who had taught her that?

“Why, Brandy? Why don't you want me to get near Percy? He's lovely, lovelier than any man we'll ever meet in these parts. Do ye want him for yerself? Is that the reason? Aye, that's it, I know it.”

Brandy's hand itched to slap her sister. No, she thought, she had to reason with her, gain her belief in what she was being told.

“Connie,” she said very slowly, “I wouldn't want Percy even if the only other man available was the devil himself.” She saw that Connie didn't believe her, that her sister probably didn't care what came out of her mouth. “Ye know, Connie, Percy is really quite old. Why, he must be nearly thirty.” She tried for a convincing shudder. “And he drinks so much—it's likely he'll have gout just like Uncle Claude. He'll probably have a red, veiny nose like Uncle Claude too. He'll probably lose most of his teeth, just like Uncle Claude. Och, I shouldn't want to be married to a man like that.”

“What a pack of nonsense. Those long braids of yers, Brandy, I think they've tugged yer brain too tight. Percy, old? That's ridiculous. He's perfect and he'll remain that way.”

Brandy was depressed. She walked to the edge of the grassy cliff and gazed out to sea. The size of the white caps on the waves, the tide level, and the darkening horizon surely meant a violent early spring
storm was close. She tried to remember if she had tied her small boat firmly to its moorings, for the storm that was brewing would send crashing waves even into the small inlet.

“It's going to blow up strong tonight,” she said more to herself than to her sister. She kicked a pebble off the edge of the cliff and watched it bounce down the narrow, rocky path and land in the sand on the beach below.

She turned back toward her sister and sank slowly to her knees amid the thick carpet of bluebells and wild anemones that grew in great abundance nearly to the cliff edge. She breathed in the sweet fragrance of the purple-blue flowers and for a moment forgot Percy and her too-grown-up little sister.

“Brandy, it's time to go back now. Ye'll get yer skirt stained, and Old Marta will complain to Grandmama.”

Brandy sighed and slowly rose to her feet. The wind was rising, whipping her skirt about her ankles. She tightened her thick tartan shawl about her shoulders. “I suppose since Percy is here that we'll have to change for dinner.”

She wished she hadn't said Percy's name aloud again, for Constance's very lovely eyes took on a sultry cast. Oh, dear, where had she learned that?

Brandy tried another track. “Well, you just might think him handsome, but ye're but sixteen years old, a mere child to him. I've heard Grandmama say that he likes his women round and soft and experienced in the art of love. When I asked her what kind of art that was, she threw a pillow at me and started choking. But that's not important. What's important is Percy is not only our cousin, he's too old for you. He's too old for me as well, and I've two years on ye. Forget him, Connie.” She paused then laughed. “Don't forget he
hasn't a groat. What would one do with a man who hasn't a groat?”

Well, she had tried. She watched Constance gather together her bile. She actually seemed to puff up with it. “Me, a child? Ye're just jealous, that's what you are. It's ye who wear the child's dresses. And yer ratty braids and that snaggled old shawl. Ye look ridiculous. Well, I have no intention of shriveling into an old spinster, alone and poor in this beastly place. Stay if ye wish among all the crumbling stone and pick yer stupid wildflowers. I, for one, am going to be a rich and fine lady. Just maybe Percy will become rich. He's very smart. You'll see, he'll be rich soon.”

Constance whipped about, her dark hair swirling about her shoulders, and flounced away from the promontory back toward the castle. Even her walk was enticing, Brandy thought. Where had she learned that? She wanted to tell her sister that she didn't want to stay here and rot either, that she too wanted to have a husband and a family. That she wanted to be a lady.

She started to call after her sister, but Connie's back was so righteously stiff that she didn't bother. They'd just fight some more. That's all they seemed to do recently—fight and snipe at each other. It had been different just two years before. How could she believe that Percy would ever earn any money on his own?

She finally called out, nearly shouting over the rising wind, “Connie, wait for me on the path. I've got to find Fiona.”

She saw her sister pause and turn about. She looked impatient, even to her tapping toe.

Brandy hurried to the edge of the cliff and started down the winding, rocky path, careful to watch her footing on the treacherous rocks and pebbles. “Fiona.” She cupped her hands around her mouth and called her sister three more times. “Fiona!” She
looked up and down the desolate beach below, searching for the bright red thatch of hair that topped Fiona's head. There was no movement among the coarse marram grass that grew thick and sturdy amongst the rocks on the beach, and the only sound above the waves was the hoarse squawking of barnacle geese and redshanks, intent upon finding their dinner. Her attention was caught a moment by a large, bobbing porpoise, alternately skimming and floating on the white-tipped waves, oystercatchers dipping low over him.

“Brandy, Brandy, here I am. Just look!”

She turned about to see Fiona scurrying toward her up the path, her once neat braids hanging about her small shoulders in a fiery red, wet tangle. Her woolen gown was damp and clung to her skinny legs. Brandy didn't doubt that the gown was thick with gritty sand.

She forgot about scolding Fiona for getting so dirty when Fiona grabbed her arm and cried, “Did ye see him, Brandy? The porpoise? He's been lying on his back ever so long. I called to him and I promise that he twitched his nose at me. Isn't he lovely?”

What was a sister to do? “Yes, love, I saw him. But he is gone now, searching for some abalone for his dinner. And that, little poppet, is what we must do. It is growing late and we must go back.” She ruffled the flying red hair and resolutely turned the child about.

Constance was standing in the protection of a beech hedge, combing her black hair with her fingers. She gave an ugh of distaste at Fiona's appearance. “Really, Fiona, ye look like a crofter's brat. Don't ye look at me like that, for I have no intention of brushing the tangles out of that rat's nest of hair.”

“I can remember when both of us looked just like Fiona,” Brandy said. “Don't you remember, Connie,
how we used to swim and gather driftwood and built sand castles? We used to sing all the old songs?”

Constance looked at her as if she'd lost her mind.

“We were children,” Constance said flatly. “Now we're grown up, at least I am. I never want to be dirty again.”

Fiona gave a secret smile to Brandy, a smile filled with wonder at the gray porpoise. Brandy doubted Connie had even heard her.

“Ye won't have to worry about her, Connie. I shall make her presentable. Come, it is growing late.”

They rounded a curve in the path that led onto the rhododendron-lined avenue. Penderleigh Castle rose before them like a giant gray monolith, its ancient stone gleaming in the dull gold of the setting sun. Constance paused and picked a soft magenta blossom and tucked it over her left ear. “I would offer ye one, Brandy, but it would fall out of yer skinny braids.”

That was probably true, but Brandy held her tongue. She looked at the fluted turret, once the housing for the now rusted cannons that lay in a heap, forgotten, in the grass-filled moat. She fancied she could hear the strident call of the bagpipes, daring the enemy to approach. She remembered the oft-repeated ballad of the Earl of Huntly, whispered by Marta in her blurred singsong voice:

Wae be tae ye, Huntly

And whaur hae ye been?

They hae slain the Earl o'Moray

And laid him on the green.

She hummed softly, lost for a moment in a strangely romantic past. But it was, she thought, a past plundered and lost forever after Bonnie Prince Charlie's bloody defeat. She remembered tales of the hated
Duke of Cumberland, the Englishman's avenging devil. She stared hard at the proud old castle and a knot of anger grew in her stomach. Penderleigh Castle, her birthplace, her home, now belonged to another duke, another Englishman.

“Do you hear the roar of the sea battering the rocks just behind the castle, Connie? All right, so you don't. Did you say something?”

“I said I saw Bertrand and Uncle Claude crossing from the dower house to the castle. Bertrand is such an old stick. Odd that he is so prissy prim when Uncle Claude is reputed to have tumbled many a young maid when he was young.”

Brandy couldn't imagine Uncle Claude tossing a rock, much less a maid. Surely she should try to convince her younger sister not to talk that way, but she knew it wouldn't work.

“Ha, Brandy, ye don't have to say anything. I know what ye're thinking. Ye're as prissy prim as Bertrand. What a perfect match ye two would make—both old, stuffy sticks. Why, in one winter ye'd bore each other to death.”

There were some things a person just couldn't let pass. She grinned at her sister, and even she had to admit to the touch of malice in her voice. “Bertrand old? He's younger than Percy, ye know, Connie, by at least four years.”

That brought a blink and a thankful pause, but it didn't last. “Old is as old does,” Constance said, and tossed her lovely black hair.

“Well, that certainly put Bertrand and me in our place,” Brandy said. She kept her head down, Fiona's small, dirty hand held in hers. She struggled to understand her sister. It was as if Constance wanted to hurl herself into womanhood, to scoff at all the pursuits Brandy still held pleasurable and dear. She refused to go out in Brandy's small boat to fish,
turning up her nose at the strong fishy smell and deploring the sticky, damp sea spray on her gown. If attaining womanhood meant spending all one's time on how one looked and openly flirting with the likes of Percy, she wanted none of it. She didn't want it for Connie either. Perhaps it was just a phase she was going through. Maybe Brandy had gone through it too. Maybe it had been so short that she just didn't remember it.

She hunched her shoulders forward, pulling her shawl more closely about her. At least Constance didn't have to worry about going through life with the deformity Brandy had to endure. She couldn't even take deep breaths for fear of popping the buttons on her gowns. What a dreadful jest nature had played upon her—a skinny body supporting a cow-like bosom.

She thought again of Percy, and found herself wondering why he looked at her with that disgusting, knowing look in his hooded eyes. There was certainly nothing about her appearance or her behavior to give him any encouragement. He was probably just bored here, and could find naught else to do but torment her in that loathsome way of his.

Brandy looked up to see Fiona astride one of the old cannons, yelling at the top of her lungs, which had always been healthy, “Giddyup, ye old nag, giddyup, or I'll whip yer rump.”

Brandy hadn't even realized that the child had pulled free of her. “Oh, Fiona, but look at yer gown now.” Brandy rushed forward, saw the rust flecks on the child's face and hands, and lifted her bodily from the cannon. “Oh, dear, if Old Marta sees ye like that, she'll tell Grandmama for certain. Hold still, little wriggler, let me try to clean ye off.”