The Secret Gift (32 page)

“That would be perfect. Thank you, Paul.”

Graeme made his way through the arched central hall past a lineup of marble busts on plinths that stood like attentive soldiers, one to a tread, on the main stairway. Some families commissioned paintings of their ancestors. Others kept their relatives’ memories alive through photo albums and videotape. The Dukes of Gransborough, however, went a step far beyond, immortalizing themselves in sculpture.

It had begun with the first duke, back in the late eighteenth century, who had been known to pace that same stairwell wearing knee breeches and periwig, seeking the counsel of his predecessors whenever he’d had a particularly perplexing dilemma to solve. Speaking to a marble bust had apparently proved more therapeutic than to a painting, and thereafter a tradition of committing the visages of all subsequent dukes to marble was born, a tradition that had stretched through more than two hundred and fifty years. If he ever felt inclined, Graeme could line his ancestors up around the dining table and have a bloody tea party with them, but he’d never seen the attraction in chatting with a bunch of bodyless heads. Still, they were all of them there, periwigs, mutton chops, and noble brows amongst them, and one day, God willing, there would be another added to the collection, one resembling Graeme. The fact that his place in the lineup would fall on the thirteenth tread was more disconcerting than he cared to admit.

Gransborough House was one of the few grand Georgian mansions remaining in London that hadn’t been swallowed up by commercial office space or academic museums. Still very much a family home, the house edged Green Park along a broad, tree-lined thoroughfare known as the Queen’s Walk. Begun by that same first duke in 1743, its neoclassical architecture was one of the finest examples of its kind in London, and the architects who’d worked on the house at various times throughout its history were a roll call of those Graeme had studied in his university textbooks—Kent, Adam, Holland, and Hardwick amongst them.

The house was built in the Palladian style, and the western facade, which faced the park, was a magnificent vision of classical pillars, elegant arches, and a beautiful terraced garden replete with Roman statuary. But the outside was just a whisper of the far more resplendent interior. Adorned with friezework derived from Greek and Roman temples and gilding as grand as any royal palace, the rooms had been designed as an illustrious backdrop for the elegant and distinguished lives that had been lived there.

Over the generations (and subsequent dukes), it had been renovated, remodeled, and redecorated more times than could possibly be counted. For with each duke had come a duchess who had seemed determined that she would leave her mark.

There was the great room, which had once been used to host fashionable Edwardian dress balls attended by the most noble and royal personalities of the day. The room stretched the full length of the terraced garden and was hung with a huge glittering silver and crystal chandelier that had held hundreds of candles and had taken six servants just to haul it up to the ceiling when it had been lit. The dining room, with its lofty ornate domed ceiling, had been his great-grandmother Euphemia’s pet project, a place to display her prized mahogany Chippendale table that stretched over twenty feet between Siena-marbled Corinthian columns.

All throughout the house were marble floors, and elegant furnishings filled the vast collection of rooms, sweeping any visitor back through time to various eras of grace and elegance gone by. It was the library, however, that had always been Graeme’s favorite, not so much for its impressive amount of books, which numbered in the thousands, tucked in neat shelves that ringed the room, but more for the conscious restraint and lack of ornamentation that seemed a stark contrast to the rest of the place. The library had always been the duke’s domain, and no woman’s hand had ever succeeded in changing a single feature of it. The furnishings were simple and well used, the hearth always lit with a welcoming fire. In a house that had seemed like a live-in museum, this room more than any other had always felt like home.

Graeme arrived at the library, paused in the doorway, and cleared his throat discreetly.

Behind the great kneehole Sheraton desk, Albert George Trevelyan Charlton, the ninth Duke of Gransborough, looked up from his morning edition of
The Times.
He didn’t smile. He didn’t frown. He just looked, and then shifted his gaze back to the day’s headline.

“Ah, good morning, Graeme,” he finally said. “It is good to see you.”

He was a man who had been born to be reckoned with, and everything about him was consistent with that image, from his heavy brow to the full shock of white hair he wore closely clipped to his collar. When he stood, he was a towering six feet three of broad shoulders, aristocratic bearing, and centuries of the very bluest blood England had to offer. His seventy-two years had only improved on those qualities.

The duke rose from his chair and came forward to meet his nephew, embracing him formally and briefly.

“The Highlands agree with you,” he noted, taking a step back to scan Graeme from head to toe.

It was one thing Graeme had inherited from his father’s side of the family, his height. He looked at the duke eye to eye.

“Come. Let us sit.”

The duke waved a hand toward a pair of leather armchairs set before the huge arched window that faced out onto the terraced garden, and beyond that Green Park. As he took his seat, Graeme could see people strolling along the Queen’s Walk beneath huge elms and oaks bursting with fall color. One pair, tourists, were snapping photographs of the Gransborough mansion over the box hedges, marveling at the golden Diana statue in the middle of the marble fountain. When they used their telephoto lens to try to sneak a peek inside the arched windows, Graeme knew a sudden unpleasant feeling, one he could only imagine was similar to what the caged beasts must feel on display in the Regent’s Park Zoo.

What were they hoping to capture on film? A picture of a real, live English duke sitting on the loo?

Paul came in on cue, silver coffee service in hand. He prepared them each a demitasse, ministered them to each man’s liking, then bowed out of the room on his silent butler feet.

The duke glanced at Graeme over a sip of his espresso. “I understand your latest drawings have garnered a preliminary nod of approval from His Highness, the Prince of Wales. That’s quite an accomplishment, Graeme. Your firm must be overjoyed.”

Graeme nodded. “I’ve a meeting there later today. There is still much work to do before the project can be finalized, but I’d say we’re headed in the right direction.”

“I see. Have you any thought for a time line?”

“I would guess six months at least before we can even begin to break ground.”

The duke lifted a brow, breathed deeply to express his dissatisfaction with that comment.

“You know you won’t be able to avoid it much longer, Graeme. Sooner or later, you’ll have to accept your position as the heir to all of this. You must take the time to learn the ropes. Wins and Teddy both had the benefit of a childhood that had been geared toward their future positions. You, as the spare, I’m afraid did not.”

Though Graeme bristled at the term “spare,” he kept his countenance as the duke went on.

“I understand your commitment to your career, Graeme, and most especially to this project, and I commend you on your dedication to your work, but there’s much we need to discuss about the estates, the inheritance. Out of respect for what you’ve suddenly found yourself flung into and for your dear mother’s wishes, I agreed to give you this time, the time to finish this project as a period of adjustment to your new position in life. But I cannot wait forever, Graeme. I’m not a young man.”

Graeme looked at him. “I know very well what is expected of me, Your Grace. And I gave you my word. As soon as I finish this project, my life is pledged to the dukedom.”

The duke nodded. “Good. I’m glad to hear that. I was beginning to worry, although I must say I was pleased to learn that you’ve agreed to marry.”

Graeme sat forward in his chair. “Yes, about that, Your Grace ...”

“The sooner done with it, I think, the better. It will put an end to this media carnival that surrounds you and will allow you to return to the city as soon as possible, which would undoubtedly be better for you with your work. Now, I’ve already been in preliminary talks with Cleary—”

“Lord Cleary?”

“Of course. You always did get on well with his daughter, Amaranthe, so I assumed she’d be the most logical choice.”

“Just how
preliminary
have these talks been?” Graeme asked, already dreading the response.

“Well, I had to try to discern if the girl was already involved elsewhere ...”

Graeme closed his eyes. His uncle had never been one to mince words. When he wanted to know something, he asked. When he had an opinion, he gave it. Gruff, to the point, he was a living, breathing example of the word
outspoken.

No doubt Amaranthe had already begun picking out china patterns.

That thought was confirmed a moment later.

“She’s said to prefer a spring wedding, late spring. Perhaps May, so the two of you can make your first appearance as newlyweds at Ascot in June.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Graeme said carefully.

“The Regatta in July, then. I don’t care when it’s done, just as long as it’s done and done quickly.”

Graeme drew a deep breath. “I’m afraid it’s my marrying Amaranthe at all that won’t be possible, Your Grace.”

“I beg your pardon?” The duke betrayed a rare show of emotion. “Why the devil not?”

“Because I’ve met someone.” Graeme looked at him. “Someone else.”

The duke’s face went from dark to pale white. A moment later, he lifted that heavy Gransborough brow, his voice dropping to a deadly calm. “What do you mean you’ve met someone else? Just who is this person?”

“Her name is Libby Hutchinson.”

“Hutchinson? Never heard of the family. What’s her father? A viscount? Tell me he’s at least a viscount. Where is their family seat?”

“Outside Boston.”

“Boston?”

“You wouldn’t have heard of her, Your Grace. She’s an American.”

The Duke of Gransborough, for what was likely the first time in his life, was left speechless. He just stared at Graeme, blinking.

“She’s actually Scottish, but was raised in America. Her family on her father’s side own the Wrath Estate,” and then he added to remind the duke, “that castle where I’ve been living the past weeks.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to need a bit more of an explanation than that, Graeme.”

Graeme decided to keep the details as brief as possible. He explained Libby’s situation, her unexpected inheritance, and her legal battle with Lady Venetia. He added that he’d had every intention of marrying Amaranthe, or whoever his mother and the duke might have decided upon, until he realized he had more than just a casual regard for Libby.

“She’s just different from anybody I’ve ever met before. She’s independent, intelligent, someone I can actually carry on a conversation with. And she makes me laugh, something I’ve done precious little of in the past year.”

The duke sighed with resignation. “And does this American return your feelings?”

Graeme looked at him, remembering his detour under the piano that morning. “I am led to suspect that she does.”

“Of course she bloody well would. You’re the heir to Britain’s wealthiest dukedom! She’d be a fool not to.”

“She doesn’t know about that.”

“Doesn’t know about what?”

“The dukedom, my inheritance. She doesn’t know anything about that aspect of my life at all. In truth, she just thinks I’m Graeme Mackenzie, the castle caretaker.”

“She thinks you’re a ...” The duke couldn’t quite spit it out. “... a
caretaker?”

“Yes. And amazingly, remarkably, she seems to like me in spite of it.”

“Why on earth would you ... ?” The duke just looked at Graeme as if he wanted to find a way to discredit what he was hearing, but then slowly he shook his head.

“This hasn’t been easy on you, what with losing Teddy and Wins, and then your father so soon after that. I know you never expected, never dreamed you’d be your mother’s heir, let alone my heir as well. But sometimes fate deals us unexpected turns for whatever reason, and we must rise to the challenge of them. You have put me in a most unappealing predicament. If I call off Lord Cleary, and this American decides she isn’t up to the role of a future duchess, then what?”

Graeme couldn’t answer him.

“And there are other things to consider as well. Amaranthe has been raised in The Environment, Graeme. She knows what it entails, what is expected of her, and she is well schooled for the task. You have to admit she is probably the most suitable candidate for the job.”

Graeme couldn’t deny that what the duke said was true. But was that worth staking the rest of his life on? To the duke, the role of duchess was more like a position of employment to be filled, with Amaranthe’s bloodlines and boarding-school upbringing constituting her C.V.

To Graeme, a future duchess was the woman who would be his partner ... for life.

The duke got up from his chair and went to stand at the tall arched window with his back facing the room. Graeme remained sitting, and waited.

“This has nothing to do with my thinking that this Hutchinson girl isn’t good enough or British enough. But this is more than just finding someone who strikes your fancy, Graeme. An American is raised in an environment much different than we have here, and there are certain freedoms this girl might not be so willing to give up. And I have no intention of telling you who you must marry. I’d like to think we’ve moved a little beyond the Dark Ages and no longer arrange marriages in the cradle. I only began talks with Cleary because your mother told me it would be best to get the deed over and done with.”

“My mother has met Libby, and she did not seem to think she wouldn’t be up to the task.”

The duke turned, faced Graeme across the room. He nodded. “Fine. I will talk to your mother. If this girl is the one, Graeme, if she is the one you wish to spend the rest of your life with, then I accept that and wish you very happy. But if she isn’t ...”