The Duke's Downfall (5 page)

Like a flight of bees, her bevy of admirers broke and made in a perfect wedge for the punch bowl. All but one, a fresh-faced youth with dark hair who stepped out of the throng. He looked scarcely out of leading strings and somehow vaguely familiar, though Betsy was certain she’d never laid eyes on him before.

“Nicely done, Lady Elizabeth,” he said admiringly. “If you hadn’t called for a glass of punch, I was going to yell, ‘Fire!’”

“I wish I’d thought of that,” Betsy replied with a laugh, liking him instantly. That he knew her while she hadn’t the foggiest recollection of being introduced to him did not surprise her, yet she felt no embarrassment at admitting the fact. “Forgive me, sir, but I cannot seem to recall your name. I fear I’ve made too many new acquaintances this evening.”

“I am but another, my lady,” he replied, with a bow. “I would be honored if you would call me Teddy, but my name is Theodore. Theodore Earn—”

“Teddy it is,” she interrupted urgently, as she saw over his bowed head three of her suitors racing toward her with overfull and dripping glasses of punch. “If you will ask me to dance, you may call me Betsy.”

By sheer accident, she happened to catch her grandmother’s gaze again as she offered her hand, which made the gesture appear as if she were seeking approval. To Betsy’s amazement, the dowager nodded, and by the time she recovered from the shock, she and Teddy were on the dance floor moving inexpertly, but carefully, through the steps of a waltz.

“I’m about to speak plainly, my lady, which I hope you will forgive,” he said hurriedly, his chin nodding ever so slightly in count with the music, “but your grandmother has allowed me only one dance, and there is much I must tell you. Julian Dameron is arriving in town next week, so we must move quickly.”

“That—that—mushroom!” Betsy spluttered furiously. “I warned Granmama! I told her he would!”

“So she said, my lady. She said, too, she did not want to upset you, yet I felt you should know. Having the full facts you can—”

“A moment, Teddy, if you please,” Betsy cut in. “How is it you know so much of my situation?”

“I overheard Lady Clymore in conversation with my mother. They concur that your best course— perhaps your only course—is to make a match before Dameron arrives in London. I quite agree, and I am prepared to come to your assistance.”

“You are a true gentleman.” Betsy patted him gently on the shoulder. “But shouldn’t you finish school before you propose marriage?”

“I intend to, my lady,” he replied, with a laugh. “But you mistake my meaning. What I meant to say is—”

"I appreciate your concern and your willingness to help,” Betsy cut him off again. “But it is quite unnecessary, I assure you. I am not without resources, and I have a plan of my own to thwart my grasping cousin.”

“What a happy coincidence, my lady.” Teddy grinned good-naturedly. “I, too, have a plan.”

Chapter Five

Uncommonly nettled by Teddy’s jest, Charles spent a restive evening at his desk in the library. He’d forgiven the little jackanapes by the time he’d retired, but he’d slept poorly, for the rattle of carriages and shouts of the town bucks careening from one entertainment to the next kept him awake most of the night.

Shortly after luncheon the next day, while composing a letter to Simpson about the Roman coin unearthed from a rose bed at the hall by one of the gardeners, Charles nodded off in his chair. Chin on his chest, the reading spectacles forced upon him by a lifetime of prodigious study slipping down his nose, he’d just begun to fall asleep when the squeak of the library door hinges startled him awake.

“Your pardon, Charles.” His brother Lesley leaned past the door grinning at him. “I was looking for Mother, but for an awful moment I thought I’d found Papa instead.”

“Our father,” Charles replied around a stifled yawn, “has been quite dead these last ten years.”

“Precisely the point. Have you seen Mother?”

“No!” Charles irritably pulled off his spectacles and glared at Lesley. “And I am not, contrary to the latest on-dit, anywhere near ready to stick my spoon in the wall!”

“Of course you aren’t,” Lesley replied mildly. “Who said you were?”

Fully awake now, Charles became aware of how petulant he sounded. “No one of any import,” he grumbled. “Only Teddy.”

“The little villain.” Lesley chuckled and stepped into the room, his curled beaver hat in one hand. “Called you His Dodderingness, didn’t he?”

“You’ve heard it bruited about, too?”

“Only by Teddy, which follows, since he’s the great wit who dreamed it up.”

“The insolent pup!” Charles flung his spectacles on the desk and sprang to his feet.

“Come down from the boughs, Chas.” Lesley laughed and twirled his hat on one finger. “He only means to pry you away from your books. By fair means or foul, he said to me, as well as for your own good. At least for the while you remain in town."

“I see,” Charles muttered, his gaze narrowing.

“I did try to dissuade him,” Lesley went on, rather unconvincingly, due to the slow spin of the beaver on his finger, “to assure him aren’t nearly as shut away from the world as you might appear. But he’d have none of it, and I could scarce tell him about Lady Cromley, could I?”

Charles did his best to look vague. “Tell him what about Lady Cromley?”

“You sly devil.” Lesley caught his hat to still it and wagged the index finger of his free hand as he came across the room. “No wonder you’ve so avidly embraced country life.”

He gave the word a knowing emphasis that made Charles’s neckcloth, though it was loosely tied, feel suddenly and uncomfortably tight. “I admire Lady Cromley, of course,” he replied stiffly, buttoning his waistcoat and wishing he hadn’t draped his russet. colored jacket over the back of his chair. “She is, after all, a woman of singular intelligence—”

“And singular beauty.” Lesley slid onto a corner of the desk with a wink. “The most lovely widow in the entire parish, I dare say. With absolutely no desire to be a duchess, she assured me.”

“Of course she is. And of course she doesn’t. Why would she?” Charles demanded in his best toplofty tone. “When did you—er—say you’d seen her?”

“I didn’t.” Lesley cupped his hat over his bent knee, leaned his forearm on his thigh, and smiled. “But it was just this week past while I was house hunting in the neighborhood for Amanda and me. Vast as the hall is, we’ve no desire to be underfoot, you know. I met Lady Cromley in the village. She invited me to tea and—”

The library door opened, interrupting him and admitting the Duchess of Braxton. She was frowning and tugging on a pair of blue kid gloves that matched her pelisse and hat ribbons.

“Forgive the intrusion, Charles, but I’m between appointments and—” Her Grace glanced up, saw Lesley perched on the corner of the desk, and her gaze narrowed furiously. “Here you are! And where were you yesterday?”

“At Jackson’s and at White’s. Why?”

“Why! Because you were supposed to meet me at Gunter’s in Berkeley Square at two of the clock!”

“No, dear. I am to meet you today at Gunter’s.”

Lesley laid his hat aside, drew out his pocket  watch, and sprang it open as he rose. “And I’ve purposely come three quarters of an hour early to escort you.”

“Then you can escort me to Madame’s,” the duchess replied imperiously, “for I’m late for a fitting.”

“But, Mother,” Charles corrected her, “you saw your modiste yesterday, for Denham informed me of it when I asked your direction.”

“That’s impossible! I always see Madame on Wednesday, so I couldn’t possibly— Oh, but wait.” Her Grace pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Madame could only see me on Tuesday this week. Or was it last?”

“Perhaps you would benefit from the services of a secretary,” Charles suggested. “At least until the wedding, or until your engagement book is found.”

“And perhaps,” his mother retorted, her green eyes beginning to flash, “I would benefit from cooperation rather than criticism. If that is all you have to say, Charles, then kindly return to the library.”

“I am in the library, Mother,” he replied, exchanging a bemused glance with Lesley.

“More criticism!” she shrilled, in full cry now. “If you truly wished to be of assistance, you would not spend your every waking moment in this cursed room with these cursed books! You would lend your time and your person to seeing Lesley and Amanda wed while they are still young enough to fill their nursery! Especially since Caroline Cromley is long past the age of providing you an heir!”

“Mother!” Charles and Lesley gasped in shocked unison.

“Forgive my blunt speech, but your father is no longer here to tell you such things so I must! You are not quite as clever as you think, Charles, nor is the rest of the world quite so dim. But it is the outside of enough to hear you, who cannot find his boots without his valet, tell me that I need a secretary! And furthermore—”

“Mother, see what I’ve found!” Teddy skidded into the room at a run, pinwheeling his arms to keep from falling on the highly polished floor.

With a graceful sweep of her skirts, the duchess turned and saw her red leather appointment book clutched in one of his madly waving hands. “My engagement calendar!” she cried joyfully, and snatched it away from him.

It was enough to unbalance Teddy and send him thudding to the floor on the seat of his cream-colored trousers. He gave a yelp of pain, but Her Grace stepped nimbly over him with a triumphant smile on her face.

“Now we’ll just see, shall we, who is to meet whom and when.” She opened her book and read in a lofty tone, as she looked down her nose at the page, “Wednesday the twentieth, Lesley at Gunter’s, two of—” Her Grace slapped the book shut with a sniff and squared her shoulders. “Come along then, or we shall be late!”

Kicking her skirts behind her, the duchess sailed out of the room, overstepping her youngest son again without so much as a downward glance. In her wake, Charles and Lesley faced each other, stunned, while Teddy, smothering a satisfied smile, rolled himself over to rub his smarting rump.

“I didn’t breathe a word, Chas. I swear it.”

“Of course you didn’t,” replied Charles, his gaze shifting suspiciously toward Teddy.

“And you, halfling?” Lesley turned on his heel, one brow arching speculatively.

“Breathe a word of what?” Teddy asked, levering himself to his feet. “Lady Cromley?”

Out of the mouth of babes, Charles thought, groaning and wiping a hand over his face. Beside him, Lesley made a noise in his throat that could easily pass for a snarl.

“D’you want all of him,” he asked Charles, “or should we each take a half?”

“Now see here,” Teddy retorted, with an indignant sweep at his mussed hair. “I haven’t said a word of anything that Lady Cromley hasn’t bruited about herself.”

If Teddy had just said he’d passed Latin with flying colors, Charles couldn’t have been more stunned. He stood thunderstruck and speechless, until Lesley turned a slow pivot to look at him. “No desire to be a duchess, eh?”

“I fear,” Charles replied, the anger and betrayal he felt deepening his voice to a growl, “that the lady doth protest too much.”

“I believe you’ve hit the mark squarely.” Lesley gave him a quick but reassuring clap on the shoulder. “You tend to the scamp. I’ll speak to Mother.”

Swiping his hat off the desk, Lesley strode toward the door, paused there with his hand on the knob, and looked back at Teddy. “A word to the wise, halfling.” He pointed his thumb at Charles over his shoulder. “He is the Duke of Braxton and your fate rests in his hands.”

“Yes, Lesley,” Teddy murmured meekly. He was, in fact, counting on it, and as the library door closed behind Lesley, he turned a suitably contrite face to Charles.

And for an awful moment didn’t recognize him, for he’d fully expected to see His Dottiness still standing in a wounded daze behind the desk. The fire in Charles’s eyes, the air of immutable authority fairly crackling around him, gave Teddy such a fright the starch nearly went out of his neckcloth. And in the next instant his resolve, when Charles smashed a fist against the desk with such force that the inkwell wobbled.

“Damn and blast it!” he swore viciously.

Prayers Teddy hadn’t known he remembered leapt into his head. He murmured them fervently, his lips moving, until Charles hissed between his teeth and flung his hand open to shake it. An audible sigh escaped him then and he grinned, almost giddy with relief, as Charles dropped heavily into his chair and rubbed his hand.

“Let that be a lesson to you, halfling.” His eyes were simmering, but no longer blazing. “Emotion never solves anything. Only logic and reason.

“I quite agree,” Teddy replied, coming forward to sit in the leather chair before the desk.

“Since when?” Charles raised a brow at him. “Have you turned a new leaf since breakfast?”

“It was made vividly clear to me when Mother and I chanced to meet at the Parkinsons’ last evening,” Teddy explained gravely. “She cut up rather stiff.”

“I did try to warn you.” Charles gave up rubbing his hand and leaned tiredly back in his chair. “Wise of you to return her book. Too late, but wise none the less.”

“Right you are, Chas.” Teddy leaned eagerly forward and bent one elbow on the desk. “I should have listened to you. I should always listen to you, and I wish now that I had.”

“Never too late to start, halfling.” Charles preened, but a second later went stiff and upright as a vicar in his chair. “Cut line, scamp. Out with it.”

Teddy blinked naively. “Out with what?”

“Whatever it is you’re trying to turn me up sweet before you tell me. Is it what you heard Lady Cromley say?”

“Oh, no, Chas. Nothing of the kind.” Teddy lowered his gaze and squirmed in his chair.

“Come now.” Charles cleared his throat. “It can’t be as bad as all that. If I’m to mollify Mother and avoid a scandal, you must tell me.”

“I only heard what she told Lesley,” Teddy said, leaving out that he’d heard it just now as he’d listened at the keyhole. “That she had no desire to be a duchess. But it wasn’t so much what she said as how she said it, if you take my meaning.”

Charles winced, bent his elbow, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I do.”