The Duke's Downfall (9 page)

“That will be all.” Lady Clymore dismissed the butler crisply, her composure recovered. “Betsy, you may pour.”

She did so, noting that clever old Iddings had used the second-best tea service. Her grandmother seemed not to notice, so consumed was she with glaring daggers at Julian, who wouldn’t know an outmoded china pattern if she broke every piece over his head. Which was an option, Betsy supposed, if all else failed.

But all else, in the form of Boru, had never failed her. The thought comforted Betsy—and enabled her to smile her prettiest smile as she handed Julian his cup and saucer.

“A compromise occurs to me,” he said, addressing himself to the dowager as he leaned back to sip his tea, “a way by which we can both be at hand to receive any offers that may come Elizabeth’s way.”

“And what is that?” her ladyship inquired, as she raised her cup to her lips.

“I propose to take up residence here in Berkeley Square."

The outrageous suggestion caught Lady Clymore with a mouthful of tea half swallowed. Choking and spluttering, she snatched up her napkin, while Betsy whisked the cup and saucer out of her hand, hastily set it aside with her own on the table, and thumped her grandmother soundly on the back.

“Since we are family, no one of the ton will think it untoward,” Julian finished, thinking dispassionately what a pity it would be if the old dragon strangled.

The old dragon did not, merely recovered her breath, her aplomb, and fixed a sulphurous gaze on the mushroom earl. The fiery setdown poised on her lips was forestalled, however, by another rap on the saloon doors.

“Come in and be quick about it!”

At Lady Clymore’s scorchingly delivered admittance, Iddings nipped into the room, quickly announced, “Lord Theodore Earnshaw,” then stepped aside with a bow. And a slight inclination of his head directed at Betsy.

Acknowledging the signal with a brief, upward lift of her chin, Betsy bowed her head but raised her eyes to watch Julian come to his feet as Teddy strode into the saloon. Nattily attired in a sable brown coat, russet waistcoat, buff pantaloons, and Hessians, he went first to her grandmother, as was proper, and bowed over the hand she lifted.

“How kind of you to call, Teddy,” said Lady Clymore, banking her fire with obvious reluctance. “But I must own I was expecting Her Grace.”

       Displeasure narrowed Julian’s gaze and thinned his mouth to a tight, white line. Betsy was unsure whether the cause was the familiarity of her grandmother’s address, or the width of Teddy’s unpadded shoulders, which masked the quick wink he gave her. Knowing Julian, she decided it was both.

“I bring her deepest apologies, my lady,” Teddy replied, “and her promise to call upon you on the morrow.”

“Her Grace is not indisposed, I trust?”

“Never, my lady.” Teddy grinned as he straightened. “Merely at loose ends, for Lesley is to be wed next week.”

“I’ve sent word that Betsy and I will attend. I trust Her Grace has received it?”

“I’m sure she has, my lady, but I will make it a point to tell her.”

“Excellent.” Lady Clymore’s eyes began to smolder again as they settled on Julian. “Allow me to make you known to the Earl of Clymore, a most distant connection of my late husband’s.”

“Your servant, my lord.” Teddy offered another bow and his hand.

Julian accepted it briefly. “A pleasure,” he said, but the curt tone of his voice implied otherwise.

“Do please join us.” Lady Clymore waved Teddy toward the settee occupied by Julian, as Iddings silently delivered another cup and saucer and withdrew. Leaving the saloon doors ajar behind him, Betsy noticed. “We were quite disappointed not to see you last evening at Lady Pinchon’s rout.”

“I was sorry to miss it, my lady, but I was otherwise engaged.”

With his Latin grammar, Betsy surmised, for Teddy had confided his difficulties with that language to her when first they’d met at Lady Parkinson’s ball. She’d volunteered to tutor him, which was the reason he had come, but she’d sooner dance with the Duke of Braxton again than admit the fact in front of Julian.

“Pity,” the dowager said, turning a pointed look on her. “I believe Betsy saved a dance for you on her card. “Didn’t you, m’dear?”

“Yes, Granmama,” she replied, deftly following her grandmother’s lead, “a waltz, just as you directed.”

The embellishment was her own, added for its value to shock and aimed directly at Julian. It landed squarely on the mark, eliciting a curled-lip frown from her cousin, which Betsy took for an angry snarl.

In fact, it was a sneer of contempt. Did his kinswomen think him cloth-headed enough to believe this puppy was a serious rival? Obviously so, Julian decided, which was even more infuriating than their ridiculous efforts to bam him.

“If you will promise me another dance, Lady Elizabeth, I vow I will be there to partner you myself,” Teddy said ardently to Betsy. “Though it was good of old Charles to stand up for me.”

The sudden leap of Betsy’s eyelids and the rush of color to her cheeks jolted Julian out of his glowering slouch. “Charles?” he queried sharply. “Charles who?”

“Why, my brother, of course,” replied the puppy, eyeing Julian as if he’d just come to town in the back of a farm wagon. “The Duke of Braxton.”

Julian gaped, first at Teddy, then at Betsy, who was nearly as stunned as her cousin. How did Teddy know the duke had danced with her? She assumed his brother had told him, but what if, instead, one of Lady Pinchon’s guests had come unseen into the foyer? Deaf and blind as they had all appeared to be, there was, Betsy knew, no surer cure for failing sensibilities among the ton than a whiff of scandal.

But questioning Teddy at length must wait, for there was a mushroom to be rid of, and so she said, “It was most kind of His Grace to lead me out,” and lowered her gaze.

Not to appear missish—though if Julian so misread it all the better—but to hide the guilt she feared might show on her face at telling such a blatant lie. This was, Betsy realized uncomfortably, the third she’d told since breakfast. Prevarication was not in her nature, at least it had not been so until she’d come to London.

Telling herself she’d done no more in the present instance than dance to the tune first struck by her grandmother and then by Teddy was small comfort. The fact remained that the half-truths she’d begun upon her arrival in town had ballooned into complete fabrications. Which caused her gaze to lift to Julian, still staring at her slack-jawed and thunderstruck, and quelled the impulse she felt to confess.

Desperate circumstances called for desperate measures. She was not the one who’d dumped the Duke of Braxton into this particular bag of moonshine; Teddy had done that, but if she could tie the strings of it about his head for the sake of leading Julian to believe she was on the verge of receiving an offer, then so be it. Such a small favor was the very least His Grace owed her for ruining her gown and her evening. But not her reputation, she hoped, for the moment pushing that worry aside.

"Charles quite enjoyed himself,” Teddy went on, lying blithely with a skill that amazed Betsy. “He said to tell you so, and asked if you would grant him another waltz at the Countess Featherston’s ball tomorrow evening.”

“I—would be delighted,” Betsy replied, hoping Julian would take the halt in her voice for maidenly demure.

It was, in fact, incredulity, for the knot newly tied in an already twisted skein would serve no purpose other than to assure Julian’s presence at the Countess Featherston’s ball. How Teddy imagined that would help her cause she hadn’t a clue, but trusted the speaking look he gave her signified a method to his madness.

“Will Her Grace not object?” Julian asked.

“My mother?” Teddy regarded him with a dubiously arched eyebrow. “I should think not, my lord.”

The misconstruction Julian had made was quite natural, but the look of naked fury that contorted his features as Teddy corrected him was not. It should have frightened her, Betsy supposed, since it was focused solely upon her, but it did not. Rather it exulted her, for it was the first clear indication of a breach in the Earl of Clymore’s wall of overweening arrogance.

“Really, Julian,” Lady Clymore sniffed. “Everyone who is anyone knows that Braxton is unwed, and that the duchess is a dowager. I advise you do a bit of boning up lest you make a complete cake of yourself in Society.”

“I shall do so, my lady. You may count upon it.” The earl banged his cup and saucer down on the tea service and rose. “Now if you will excuse me.”

He bowed first to Lady Clymore, then Betsy, accorded Teddy a barely civil nod, and strode to the saloon doors.

Catching the one Iddings had left ajar by the knob, Julian swung abruptly back to glare at them. “You may all count upon it,” he repeated, the fury in his gaze deepening his voice with ominous undertones.

He swung the door wide then to stalk through it, but before he could take a step, Boru lunged past him into the saloon. Stunned and openmouthed, Julian watched the hound gather himself to leap at the settee, then nearly fell over his own feet in his haste to escape the saloon and slam the door behind him.

“Boru, no!” Betsy sprang to her feet, but too late, for the hound was already launching himself into the air.

Wide-eyed with horror at the shaggy missile hurtling toward him, Teddy could do nothing but fling up his arms as the hound landed on the striped satin cushions. Lady Clymore shrieked, so did Teddy, and Betsy clapped her hands over her eyes as the settee went crashing over backward.

Chapter Nine

Fervently praying Teddy was unhurt, or if he was that the Duke of Braxton’s country seat did not contain a dungeon, Betsy swept her hands away from her eyes and rushed across the saloon. Holding her breath, she peered over the edge of the upended settee, her heart nearly stopping when she saw Teddy.

He was sprawled on his back, Boru straddling his chest. The hound’s mouth was open, but his teeth were not clamped around Teddy’s throat as it first appeared. Nor was Teddy holding Boru off by the scruff of his neck. He was merely scratching his ears.

“What a fine fellow you are,” he said admiringly.

Betsy nearly swooned with relief and pressed one hand to her throat. “Are you all right?”

“Perfectly.” Teddy glanced up at her and grinned. “What a whacking great dog. Is he yours?”

The saloon doors burst open then, spilling an eager Iddings and George into the room. “Did Boru get ‘im, m’lady?” The footman asked. Iddings gave him a sharp look and an even sharper elbow in the ribs.

“Lend a hand, quickly,” Betsy said, avoiding her grandmother’s suspiciously narrowed gaze as she rounded the settee to catch Boru’s collar and tug him off Teddy.

She drew the hound aside, while George righted the settee, and Iddings helped Teddy to his feet. Once the rug had been straightened and the tails of Teddy’s coat brushed, the footman and the butler made for the door.

“I have not given you leave to go,” Lady Clymore said, her imperious tone turning the servants in their tracks to face her. “Am I to understand that it was by design rather than accident that Boru found his way into this room?”

“It was, Granmama,” Betsy confessed. “The plan was to be rid of Julian and it was exclusively mine. Iddings and George are blameless. I impressed them."

“Is this true?” the dowager demanded of her majordomo.

“Beg pardon, Lady Elizabeth.” Iddings made a small bow in her direction. “But it is my recollection that we volunteered.”

“Mine as well, m’lady,” George agreed staunchly.

“They are merely trying to protect me, Granmama,” Betsy countered. “The fault is mine entirely.”

“I do not doubt that,” Lady Clymore retorted, fixing a fierce gaze on her servants. Her scathing tone made Betsy cringe, and George and Iddings stiffen. “Given the serious nature of this misdeed, I have no choice but to sentence you both to an extra half day. That is all. You may go.”

“Yes, my lady,” they murmured in unison, bowing quickly to hide their startled but appreciative grins.

“Iddings.” The countess turned the butler about as he and George reached the doorway. “If it should in future be necessary to implement such a plan, I suggest you listen at the door to make sure Boru pounces on the right quarry.”

“I shall, my lady,” he promised, with a twinkle in his eye, then followed George from the room and shut the doors.

“Punish me if you must,” Betsy said as her grandmother wheeled toward her, “but spare Boru. He is guilty only of despising Julian.”

“As do we all.” Lady Clymore gingerly reached out her hand to pat the top of Boru’s head. He cringed at her touch, but when she did not rap him with her knuckles, he lifted his ears and thumped his tail against the floor. “Had you confided your plan to me, I would have tripped Julian on his way to the door.”

“I would give passing marks in Latin to see that,” Teddy said, with a laugh.

“You need wager nothing, only call upon the morrow,” Betsy told him unhappily, “for unless we can persuade him otherwise, Julian intends to take up residence with us.”

“Persuasion will not be necessary,” Lady Clymore replied firmly. “This house is mine, entailed to me by my mother. He has no claim here, and I shall tell him so when next he calls. Hopefully with his trunks in hand—so that I may have the pleasure of casting him bag and baggage into the street!”

“So it is!” A smile lit Betsy’s face, but only for a moment. “And what of the ton? Will Julian not bruit it about that you refused him hospitality?”

“Let him.’ The dowager sniffed and took herself back to the settee. “An evening or two in the company of the Earl of Clymore will give Society the right of it, I think.”

Just as another dance or two with the lovely Lady Elizabeth, Teddy thought, would further persuade Charles of their suitability. That his brother was at least partially convinced he had no doubt, for the duke had come home very late the night before. Without his coat and in a towering rage.

The memory of Charles slamming into the Bond Street house shouting for brandy brought a smile to Teddy’s face, for it signified that the first stumbling block to his plan had been overcome—His Majesty’s Ship Braxton was no longer becalmed. Now its youthful but well-seasoned captain had only to steer a course into the heart of the golden-haired tempest, who was presently seating herself next to her grandmother on the settee.