The Duke (8 page)

“Oh, I don't know ye weren't yet married. I don't think Grandmama knows either, else she would have trumpeted it all over Penderleigh. Aye, this is something ye must consider.”

“I'm twenty-eight, a great age, I suppose, to one of your youth.”

“Not at all. Ye see, I am to be nineteen come Michaelmas, so ye are not at all old.”

It was true. She was scarcely younger than Felicity, the lady he would marry in August. Felicity was so very different from this girl. And Marianne. He welcomed the familiar deep ache, for it nourished her fading image in his mind. She would have been twenty-six now and probably the mother of several children. He wondered yet again what their children would have looked like. Certainly their daughters would have been delicate like her, their eyes a luminous green. Ah, and their sons—his sons—proud and strong, all strong and big as he was. He smiled down at her, saying nothing, and let his attention be drawn to seagulls squawking shrilly overhead.

He heard Brandy say, “Ye see, Ian, Fiona is forever trying to build a sand castle just like Penderleigh. Poor child, the fluted turrets are always collapsing on her.”

He pushed Marianne away and looked down at Fiona. He imagined that her fiery hair must already be gritty with wet sand. “None of you appear to resemble each other. Who does Fiona take after, Brandy?”

“From what Grandmama says, Fiona is the only one of us who really looks like anybody. Her hair and eyes are the exact color of my mother's sister, Aunt Antonia. As for Constance, she has somewhat the look of our mother. And I, well, Grandmama calls me her changeling.”

“Just as long as she doesn't call you an old sot.”

“Poor Crabbe. She used to do horrid things with his real name, very fishy things, insults I didn't understand. Thank God he isn't related, else she would show him no mercy.”

“You mean call him a feckless idiot?”

“That's it.”

“Speaking of relations, who exactly is Percival?”

“He's a bastard.”

“I wasn't referring to his character, rather his relationship to us.”

“He's a bastard.”

He saw then that she was perfectly serious. Ah, but her eyes were alight with laughter. He grinned back at her. “For a bastard he certainly seems to have the run of the castle.”

“Aye, Grandmama is very fond of him, more's the pity. He flatters her, ye see, and I must admit that he does it well.”

He gave her a sharp look that she didn't notice, for she had slipped down to her knees and was busily gathering yellow anemones on her spread skirt.

He dropped to his knees beside her, forgetting his last pair of buff breeches. He began to absently pluck the flowers with her. “Just what exactly are his antecedents?”

She raised her eyes to his face and said matter-of-factly, “His father, Davonan, was my uncle, one of Grandmama's sons. When Uncle Davonan was quite young, he seduced a rich merchant's daughter in Edinburgh. When she discovered she was pregnant, he refused to marry her. From what I have been able to glean from Old Marta's gossiping and Grandmama's occasional spurts of anger, Uncle Davonan left Penderleigh and went to Paris. He died there some ten years ago, with one of his lovers.”

“Lovers? He had many?”

“Aye, he did, but it's not what ye think. Uncle Davonan did not prefer women, ye see. Although I must say,” she continued with ill-concealed bitterness, “that Percy is continually endeavoring to make amends for that fact.”

“To the point of making himself a nuisance where you are concerned, Brandy?”

“Aye.”

He thought about her calm acceptance of her Uncle Davonan's preference for men, a subject that no young English lady would speak about even if she chanced to know that such a thing existed. Ah, but this openness of hers reflected only a childlike candor. She was innocent. He said without thought, “I think Percy should direct his attention to women and not children. Perhaps he is unnatural in his own way.”

S
he threw the anemones at him and jumped to her feet. “I told ye, yer grace, that I was eighteen, nearly nineteen. Hardly a child. Do I look like a child? Do I?”

“No, not at all. I misspoke. What I meant was that he should direct his attentions toward women of experience and not toward his innocent cousin. You are innocent, aren't you, Brandy?”

“Ye mean, am I still a virgin?”

“Well, that's a sort of innocence.”

“Of course I'm a virgin. Who around here would relieve me of my virginity? Except for Percy, of course, and ye can be certain that I avoid him whenever he's about.”

“Good. Perhaps I'll avoid him too. He sneers. Sneering annoys me. It makes me want to send my fist into the man's face. What do you think?”

“Smash him,” she said and stooped down to pick up the anemones she'd thrown at him.

“That's a thought. Tell me, though, why does he resent me so much? I understand that he could very well hate the English. Is that it? Surely he knows that a bastard could never hold claim to either the earldom or Penderleigh Castle.”

Brandy was silent for several moments, struggling
with the fact that although Percy was, in her opinion, a rotter, he was nonetheless a Scot, whereas the duke was English. Her liking for him won the day. “There's more to it than that. Constance overheard Grandmama tell Percy that she planned to legitimize him. She wants him to marry an heiress and repair his fortunes.”

“Ah.”

“What does ‘ah' mean?”

“It means that once he's legitimized, he may try to overturn my inheritance. Don't you agree?”

She nodded. “He's a rotter and I don't trust him. If Lady Adella does get him legitimized, I'd be worried what he'd try to do. He isn't to be trusted.”

“No, I wouldn't imagine that he is. How do Claude and Bertrand stand in all this? You see, my solicitors really knew nothing about the interesting relationships that seem to abound here. All these male relatives have come as a surprise to me.”

“Ye didn't know that Uncle Claude as well as Bertrand are disinherited?”

He stared down at her. “Disinherited? Good Lord, this grows more tangled than a melodrama on Drury Lane.”

“What's Drury Lane?”

“That's where all the theaters are in London.”

He watched her think about this for a moment, but then she surprised him by saying, “Actually, I don't know the real reason why my Great-uncle Douglass was disinherited. He was Grandpapa Angus's older brother and heir to the title. From what Old Marta says, Grandpapa Angus's father, the old earl, literally threw him off the estate and made Angus his heir. After Douglass died, Grandpapa Angus allowed Uncle Claude and Bertrand to come and live in the dower house. Bertrand has been the estate manager for the past six or seven years.” She added, a glint in her
eyes, “Bertrand is a good man, regardless of what ye might be thinking of Penderleigh. It's not easy to keep us all fed and pander to Grandmama's whims at the same time. There's so little for Bertrand to work with.”

Did she expect him to throw Bertrand off the estate? Or was she in love with him? Oddly, he didn't like that thought. She was too young—well, not that, but too innocent for the seemingly unworldly Bertrand. What she was, he thought, was wonderfully complex. What she needed was a man who would understand this wonderful innocence of hers, this complexity, and at the same time not think her any less innocent when she happened to speak matter-of-factly about her great uncle Davanon preferring men. “I see,” he said.

“I also heard that Lady Adella has plans to reinherit Claude and Bertrand, just as she plans to legitimize Percy.”

“A wily old woman, your grandmother. Does she want everyone at everyone else's throat? Does she want murder most foul committed at her very feet?”

“She would find that amusing. I love her, but there is a wickedness in her as well. But legitimizing Percy and reinheriting Uncle Claude and Bertrand, I think she does it to right the wrongs of the past. What happened so long ago, I don't know. It must have been something terrible for Uncle Douglass to be disinherited. Also, as I'm sure ye've already guessed, she prides herself on being eccentric.”

That was interesting, he thought. “And you, Brandy, what do you pride yourself on being?”

She gave him a charming smile and a shrug. “I, yer grace? I suppose that from yer point of view I'm just a provincial female with no dowry, just a poor relation.”

Her matter-of-factness took him off his guard this time, and made him angry. He realized that he was
now her guardian and had it in his power to alter her future, a future that indeed seemed rather bleak from his perspective. He mentally dressed her in a fashionable gown. She would be nineteen, marriageable age. It occurred to him that Felicity could take Brandy under her wing and bring her out in society. He said, “I am now your guardian, Brandy, and you are in no way a provincial female to me. I'm to be married in August to a charming lady who, I'm certain, would be delighted to teach you how to get on in society. Would you like to visit London?”

Visit London? Stay with him and his new bride? And this new bride would show her how to behave in their exalted English society? She felt herself turning red with anger. She threw the anemones at him again, shouting, “No, I shouldn't like it at all, any of it. How dare ye offer me up like a country bumpkin? Would ye lead me about on a leash to show all yer fancy friends? Would ye scold me if I didn't curtsy deeply enough to one of yer fine friends? Ye may take yer guardianship, yer grace, and stuff it in yer boot.”

He was stunned. He didn't say a word.

Well, that was something, to have reduced the powerful English duke to absolute silence. “I'm going to see to Fiona. Ye may find yer own way back, yer grace.” She raced to the cliff path and soon disappeared.

He got back the use of his tongue, but it was swelled with outrage. No words could get out. The damned chit. How dare she treat his generous offer with such scorn? How dare she deliberately misunderstand him? Put her on a leash? Damn her, what she needed was to be shaken hard, perhaps thrown over his legs and thrashed.

Well, damn. He walked to the cliff edge. He saw her finally running toward Fiona on the beach below.
Felicity and Giles were right. The Scots were close to savage.

He yelled, his hands cupping his mouth, “You want manners, my girl. You need to be whipped. You need to come back here and let me tell you exactly why I want to whip you.”

To his surprise, she turned away from Fiona and marched back up the path. His anger didn't calm much on her return journey. When she got to the cliff top, she walked straight up to him, reached in the pocket of her skirt, and flung something at him.

He stared down to see the two guineas sparkling in the sunlight at his feet. The guineas he'd given to Fiona the day he'd arrived at Penderleigh and nearly run the child down.

“Do ye really think I'm in want of manners, yer grace? Ha!” She turned and raced away from him, back down the path to the beach.

“Damn you, Brandy, that was unfair. That wasn't my fault. It was yours.” He closed his mouth. She was long gone. Besides, what he was saying was ridiculous. She'd dished him up quite well. She'd laid him out like Gentleman Jackson occasionally laid him out in the boxing ring. Damnation.

He kicked the guineas with the toe of his boot, then bent down and picked them up. He tossed them in the air, caught them, tossed them again. He couldn't remember the last time he'd mucked something up so badly. She was a damned girl, and he'd been left standing here feeling a fool. He saw Brandy with Fiona on the beach, both of them on their knees, slapping wet sand in a pile that he supposed was Penderleigh Castle. He brushed off his breeches and turned away. Why, he wondered, was she so against coming to London? He went through what he'd said. No, everything had been straightforward, nothing he could remember to bring on her fury. Put her on a leash? Rubbish.

He walked back toward the castle. His first morning here with the Robertson inmates hadn't turned out very well.

“Yer grace.”

The duke saw Bertrand, his hair as darkly bright as a cock's comb under the brilliant morning light, striding toward him.

“Good morning, Bertrand,” he called, planting a smile of welcome on his lips. He dismissed one particular female from his mind, curse her hide.

“Ye've been enjoying our bright spring morning, I see,” Bertrand said.

The two men shook hands, and the duke looked down at his grass-stained breeches. “I hope my baggage arrives soon, else I'll have to beg a pair of breeches off you.”

“Or perhaps one of my father's kilts.”

The duke tried and failed to picture himself in a Scotsman's traditional short skirts.

“I know it's a daunting thought, but ye've the legs for the kilt. As for myself, I can't imagine striding about in one, the wind whipping up from beneath. Aye, ye've got it right. There's not a stitch beneath a kilt. It's supposed to be healthy, keeping the air moving about everything.” Bertrand laughed. He'd never seen a man look as horrified as the duke did. “All right, no kilt as yet.”

“I'll stick to my breeches, grass stains and all, for the moment. As for my legs, they thank you for the compliment.”

Bertrand smiled at the duke's reply, then said, “I daresay ye would wish to see the Penderleigh ledgers, and perhaps visit some of our crofters to get the feel of life here.”

“I should like that very much,” the duke said, thinking that Bertrand, at least, seemed open and intelligent and not at all perturbed that he was a hated
Englishman descending on them. “Brandy told me you've run the estate for many years now.”

“Aye, I do all my work at the dower house. If ye would like to come with me, we won't be disturbed. My father is at the castle with Lady Adella.”

They were in all likelihood discussing his earldom, the duke thought. Well, there was no hope for it. “Let's get on with it, Bertrand, and please, call me Ian. We're cousins.”

The Penderleigh dower house proved to be very little more than a two-story, weathered stone cottage, with heavy green vines looping in and out of the crevices. A neat, well-tended garden was planted on the east side of the cottage, in startling contrast to the wild, unkept castle grounds. “You look as if you get along quite well here.”

“Fraser takes good care of us. We are very nearly self-sufficient, what with all the vegetables he coaxes out of this arid ground. We are fortunate to be protected from the sea by all the beech hedges.” Bertrand unlatched the narrow front door and motioned to the duke to duck his head.

“Incidentally,” Bertrand said under his breath, “please don't mention Morag in Fraser's presence. They're married, ye see, but hold each other in truly remarkable dislike. I believe they lived together for exactly one week.”

“Morag is the woman who scratches.”

“Aye, the result of not bathing, a behavior that helped to quickly sour their happy union. I've always wondered why Fraser didn't notice this lack in his chosen mate before the wedding. Perhaps she bathed then. Who knows? But Father and I try not to ever bring her up in a conversation with Fraser.”

The duke looked up to see a plump, balding man coming toward him, a gardening tool in his hand. “Och, Master Bertrand, yer father's up at the castle.
Hied himself off just an hour ago after one of the boys came to tell him Lady Adella wanted to speak to him.”

“Aye, Fraser, I know. This is my kinsman, his grace, the Duke of Portmaine and now also the Earl of Penderleigh.”

“Yer grace.” Fraser gave him a smile and a bow.

“Fraser, be so kind as to fetch us tea. His grace and I will be in the study.”

“Aye, Master Bertrand.” He gave the duke a salute with the trowel he was carrying and, with a sprightly step, retreated in the direction he had come.

“Good man,” Bertrand said as he led the duke into a small sunlit room whose furnishings, although old and time-faded, were distinctly respectable. Piles of papers and large velum ledgers were stacked neatly atop a large oak desk.

Bertrand looked at those ledgers, then down at his feet. He tugged the thick shock of red hair that lay over his left temple. “Well, damn, there's no way to say it. Ye haven't inherited Holyrood House, Ian.”

“It matters not,” the duke said calmly. “Let's get on with it.”

Bertrand seated himself beside the duke and opened the ledger to the most recent page. He began to painstakingly read aloud the entries.

Ian, after some minutes of this recital, grinned and shook his head. “Words I understand better than numbers. Tell me this, Bertrand, can Penderleigh maintain itself?”

Bertrand said readily, closing the book, “Aye, it could if our crofters could be brought into this new century. Ye see, we have rich farmland in the lowlands to our east and south that is admirably suited for growing corn. But our crofters have not the tools nor the experience to sow the land. What happens most
of the time is that they join with the fishermen from the small villages to our north whilst their wives and bairns shepherd a few black-faced sheep.”