My Heart's True Delight Read online

  My Heart’s True Delight

  True Gentlemen Book 10

  Grace Burrowes

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  To My Dear Readers

  Truly Beloved—Excerpt

  The Truth About Dukes—Excerpt

  Dedication

  To those who suffer disorders of mood

  Chapter One

  “If you are so unforgivably clodpated as to challenge William Chastain to a duel,” Ash Dorning said, “I will shoot you in the arse myself, Tresham. And lest you forget, I was raised in the country. My aim is faultless.”

  “You won’t shoot me,” Jonathan Tresham replied. “Lady Della would never forgive you for wounding her devoted brother. Besides, I’ll need you to serve as one of my seconds.”

  Ash poured two fingers of brandy from the better stock kept behind The Coventry Club’s bar. At this midmorning hour, the cleaning crew had already come through. The room was tidy and deserted, and a perfect place to talk sense into Tresham.

  Or try to. He passed Tresham the medicinal tot and poured one for himself. “If you add fuel to the flames of gossip by involving Lady Della’s name in a matter of honor, you will be the brother she never forgives. As far as polite society is concerned, the Haddonfield menfolk are her siblings, and your involvement in the situation would only cause the wrong kind of speculation.”

  Lady Della’s mother and Tresham’s father had had an affair while married to other people. The tall, blond Haddonfields affectionately referred to the petite brown-haired Lady Della as their changeling, but anybody who took a close look at Della and Tresham side by side would see an uncanny resemblance.

  If those people had any sense, they’d speculate silently. Della was fiercely loved by all of her siblings and by any number of relatives and family connections.

  Della was loved by Ash, too, not that his sentiments signified.

  “Why did she do it, Dorning?” Tresham took his drink to the roulette table and gave the wheel a spin. “Why run off with Chastain? He’s a bounder and an inept card player, and worse yet, a rake.”

  Because Ash was a co-manager of The Coventry Club, he knew exactly what Tresham meant. The more heavily William Chastain lost, the more heavily he drank, and the more heavily he bet. Ash had a fine grasp of probabilities, while Chastain had a fine grasp of the brandy decanter.

  “To young men just down from university,” Ash said, “Chastain offers a certain shallow-minded bonhomie. He looks the part of the man about Town. He pays his debts, or we’d not let him back in the door.” Though how he paid his debts was something of a mystery.

  “His damned father must be covering his markers,” Tresham muttered. “Last I heard, Chastain was engaged to some French comte’s granddaughter, so his papa is doubtless keeping Chastain out of trouble as best he can until the vows are spoken. I really do want to kill him.”

  So do I. “That won’t help. Chastain traveled no farther with Della than Alconbury. If he wants to live, or ever sire children, he’ll keep his mouth shut. The whole business will remain a private regret for both parties.”

  By daylight, the game room looked a little tired, even boring. The art on the walls depicted good-quality classical scenes—scantily clad nymphs, heroic gods—but nothing too risqué and nothing too impressive either. Without the click and tumble of the dice, the chatter of conversation, or the sparkle of the patrons’ jewels, the room was simply a collection of tables and chairs on thick carpet between silk-hung walls.

  Any Mayfair town house would have been at least as elegant. But that was the point: The Coventry’s elegance was comfortably bland, not showy, not distracting. The focus of the patrons was to be on the play and on each other.

  Ash’s focus was on Della Haddonfield, whom he had given up trying to forget months ago.

  “Chastain drinks when he loses, and he loses nearly every time he plays,” Tresham said, wandering between the tables. “Sooner or later, he’ll drink too much and start wittering on about the elopement with Lady Della. He spent half the damned night with her in that inn, Ash. I should kill him for that alone.”

  “I know, Tresham,”—God, do I know—“but Della apparently went with him willingly. Would her family tell you if that wasn’t the case?”

  “I have no idea.” Tresham perched on a dealer’s stool and took up a deck of cards. “I hate this,” he said, shuffling the deck with casual expertise. “Chastain is an affront to good society and somebody needs to take him in hand.”

  Somebody needed to put out Chastain’s lights. “Deal me in.” Ash took up a stool at the same table. “Has it occurred to you that Della might be smitten with Chastain? She might be heartbroken that Chastain’s father interrupted their elopement.”

  “My wife’s theory is that Della chose Chastain because he’s nothing more than a handsome lackwit. Della could manage him without looking up from her embroidery hoop. She’s an earl’s daughter, so Papa Chastain and Mama Chastain would eventually reconcile themselves to the match.” Tresham gathered up the cards and set the deck in the middle of the table. “I shall trounce you at cribbage.”

  Ash produced a cribbage board from the shelf beneath the table. “You don’t believe Della is smitten with Chastain?”

  “I know she isn’t. She once mentioned Chastain to me when I drove out with her. Her tone was less than respectful.”

  Ash cut for the crib and pulled the low card. “Feelings can change.”

  “Not those feelings. Della expressed pity for his sire and shared the opinion that Chastain will bankrupt the family within two years of gaining control of the Chastain fortune. She’s right.”

  Play moved along, with the cards favoring Ash. His leading peg was halfway around the board when his brother Sycamore sauntered in, looking dashing and windblown in his riding attire.

  “That is the good brandy at Tresham’s elbow,” Sycamore said, pausing to remove his spurs. “Since when do we give away the good stuff, brother mine?”

  Ash picked up his cards to find another double run, his third of the game so far. “We are generous with Tresham because he needed a tonic for his nerves.” As had Ash. “I’m beating him soundly.”

  Sycamore peered over Tresham’s shoulder. “William Chastain needs a sound beating. Who’s with me?”

  Tresham put down his cards. “What have you heard?”

  Sycamore could be tactful—about once every five years—and then only out of a perverse impulse to surprise his older siblings.

  “Chastain was at his club last night, lamenting that his French bride refuses to cry off, despite the failed elopement with a certain Lady Delightful.”

  Tresham was on his feet so quickly he knocked his stool over. “I will kill him, slowly, after protracted torture. I will geld him and cut the idiot tongue from his empty head. By Jehovah’s thunder, I ought to ruin his father for siring such a walking pile of offal.”

  “If you do ruin him,” Sycamore said, taking a sip of Tresham’s brandy, “please do it here, so the club gets a bit of the notoriety and ten percent of the kitty.”

  “Tresham, you cannot,” Ash said, getting to his feet. “You cannot so much as intimate that Chastain’s wild maunderings have any connection to reality or to Della, and you most as
suredly cannot strut about all but proclaiming that her ladyship has an illegitimate connection to you.”

  “But—”

  Ash stepped closer. “No. Not if you care for her, which you loudly claim to do. The Haddonfields have substantial consequence. They have weathered other scandals. You can be a friend of the family, a cordial acquaintance, but you cannot involve yourself in any manner that makes the situation worse than it already is.”

  Tresham finished his drink and set the glass on the table with a thunk. “I’m supposed to be the sensible one. The role grows tedious. But then, I’m selling most of this club to you two. How sensible was that?”

  “Very sensible,” Sycamore said. “We’re making you pots of money to go with the barrels and trout ponds’ worth you already have.”

  “Della will be a spinster now,” Tresham said, and Ash sensed they’d reached the heart of the dilemma. “She’s the only Haddonfield yet unmarried. They’ve all been trying to fire her off—my own dear Theodosia has tried to help—but to no avail. Now Chastain has botched an elopement, and Della will suffer the consequences. Nobody will marry her after this.”

  “Perhaps she doesn’t want to be married,” Sycamore said.

  “Then why elope with William the Witless?” Tresham snapped. “That was a desperate measure indeed, and now she’s to be an old maid.”

  Ash picked up the discarded brandy glass and shook the dregs into his mouth. “She will not be an old maid. Della is lovely, charming, smart, kind, funny, and quite well connected. You are making too much of a bad moment.”

  Sycamore sent him a curious look. “This is more than a bad moment. She spent most of the evening in the same bedroom with Chastain at the inn in Alconbury. That news was galloping up and down the bridle paths this morning. I discredited the rumor with laughing disbelief, but it’s as Tresh says: Lady Della has had no offers, and Chastain is no sort of prize. The appearances are dire.”

  If Ash could have beaten himself soundly at that moment, he would have. Lady Della had quite possibly discouraged many offers while waiting for a proposal from Ash himself.

  “The situation is far from dire,” he said. “The necessary steps are simple. The Little Season is under way. We will treat Lady Della to a show of support, mustering a phalanx of eligibles to stand up with her. She will carry on as if the gossip is just that. Chastain will learn discretion in a violent school if need be, and come spring, some other scandal will have everyone’s attention.”

  “It’s a plan,” Sycamore said, in tones that suggested it was a hopelessly stupid plan.

  “And if this plan doesn’t work?” Tresham asked. “Then may I part Chastain from his tiny cods?”

  “If the plan doesn’t work,” Ash said, “then I will marry Della myself.”

  Sycamore for once had nothing to say, while Tresham looked mightily relieved. Ash could make this offer because he was sure to a soul-deep certainty that he was the last man Della Haddonfield would ever agree to marry.

  “A failed elopement is not the end of the world, Della.” George’s tone held equal parts commiseration and good cheer. The commiseration was genuine, while Della took leave to doubt her brother’s good cheer.

  “We’re Haddonfields,” he went on, crossing to the decanters on the sideboard. “We get into scrapes. Have a nip for courage.”

  “No, thank you,” Della replied, pacing across the family parlor. “Brandy has quite lost its appeal.” Nothing appealed, except a long-term repairing lease at the family seat in Kent. Was that really too much to ask?

  If George thought it odd that his baby sister had learned of brandy’s restorative powers, he was too dear a brother to remark it. He was also too much of a Haddonfield male not to partake himself, despite the early afternoon hour.

  “You think this is an insurmountable disaster,” he said, “the scandal to end all scandals. Do you not recall when I was found kissing a certain earl’s son by moonlight in a not-deserted-enough garden?”

  “That was passed off as misguided affection, foolishness in the dregs, stupidity and high spirits. Men are allowed to be foolish and regularly are. Ladies are held to a different standard, and by any standard, I have been stupid.” Terribly, horribly, dreadfully stupid.

  Also unlucky and desperate, not to mention a tad unbalanced.

  George took a sip of his drink, his gaze assessing. The old brotherly charm and cajolery clearly weren’t working their usual magic. If Della’s siblings had paid half a wit of attention, they would have realized charm and cajolery had ceased working on her years ago.

  But no, of course not. The older Haddonfield siblings—and they were legion—were all married. The senior Haddonfields were setting up and filling their nurseries at a great rate, wafting about on balmy seas of marital bliss.

  And Della was truly, sincerely happy for them.

  “Listen to me,” George said. “You are an earl’s daughter, regardless of your connection to Tresham. You simply sail ahead as if nothing’s amiss, give the cut direct to any who intimate otherwise, and in a year or two, this will all be old news.”

  Della’s escapade would not be old news twenty years hence. The Haddonfield menfolk got into scrapes, the ladies did not.

  “George, why did you come up to Town?” Hotfoot, and without his wife and children, from whom he was seldom parted.

  “Because I missed my siblings?”

  “You saw me a month ago.” When Nicholas and Leah came up to Town, Della was dragged along with them. When the earl and his countess returned to Kent, to Kent Della did go.

  George set his drink on the sideboard and took the place at her elbow. Like every Haddonfield save Della, he was tall and blond, though not as stupendously tall as Nicholas, nor as spectacularly muscular as Beckman. Della had learned to live with being loomed over by her siblings, but today, her patience had run off with her common sense.

  “Daniel and Kirsten are preparing to come to Town as well,” George said. “Beckman and Sarah won’t be far behind. Max and Antonia will probably pop back into London now that harvest is under way. Ethan and—”

  “I won’t have it.” The sick, roiling feeling in Della’s belly crested higher. “Tell them all to stay away. For my family to flock to my side only confirms that I’ve erred badly. That’s not simply sailing ahead, George, that’s hiding me behind Haddonfield consequence, and it will only make the situation worse.”

  “You’re upset,” George said, patting her shoulder, which nearly earned him a demonstration of Della’s accuracy with a right uppercut. “Understandable, but because you’re upset, you are not thinking clearly. By this time tomorrow, you’ll be glad our siblings—”

  “Do not tell me what I am feeling, or what I will be feeling.” And do not pat my shoulder as if I were one of Willow and Susannah’s dogs.

  The fraternal concern in George’s eyes cooled to frank puzzlement. “Then you weren’t pulling a stunt merely to gain our notice?”

  “I eloped with William Chastain, George. I didn’t drop my parasol in the Serpentine to see which bachelor would soak his breeches fishing it out for me.”

  George draped an arm around her shoulders, which Della tolerated. Barely.

  “Chastain’s a buffoon, Della dearest. What were you really about?”

  She’d been trying to prevent a scandal, oddly enough. “Eloping. Trying to free William from a betrothal he never sought.” Taking a small risk for a larger reward. Or so she’d told herself. Chastain was a nasty dunderhead, an even greater dunderhead than she’d known. He’d bungled every possible detail in every possible direction, and she had been an idiot to trust him.

  “I can’t credit that you truly intended to marry him.” George dropped his arm and retrieved his drink. “Men are generally troublesome. I will be the first to admit that, and my perspective is more informed than most. I thought you were merely taking your time, waiting for the right fellow to do the tender-kisses-and-moonlight-strolls bit.”

  The right fellow had offer
ed Della tender kisses and moonlight strolls. Then Ash Dorning had decided he wasn’t the right fellow, for reasons Della still could not fathom. Ash would not give a flying fig for Della’s irregular antecedents—he and Jonathan Tresham were fast friends and business associates—but something had deterred Ash from paying her his addresses.

  “I grew tired of waiting,” Della said, and that much was true. “George, would you mind very much if I went up to my room for a lie-down? I’ve been somewhat short of sleep lately and could use a nap.” A hundred years wrapped in Mama’s shawl and buried beneath twenty quilts ought to suffice.

  “Have your nap, but, Della, you should know that Leah and Nicholas are very concerned. Chastain has already been indiscreet. He hasn’t named you specifically, but he’s dropped broad hints. The Merryfield ball is Wednesday night, and Leah was making references to a show of strength and putting a brave face on matters. Do you want to know the real reason I came up to Town?”

  “The other real reason?”

  “To make sure our dear brother Nicholas doesn’t call anybody out. Fortunately, Nick is titled while Chastain is a mere baronet’s heir. Strictly applied, the rules don’t allow for Nick to call out a commoner.”

  Della sank onto a hassock. “But Tresham is a commoner, Beckman is… And when have any of my brothers played by the rules? George, promise me there won’t be any duels. Please. I am happy to live out my days in obscurity at the family seat, and nobody need ever mention my name again.”

  Happy would be a stretch, but contentment might still be possible.

  “You deserve better than banishment, Della. Chastain abused your good name terribly, and then his idiot father had to make the situation worse. I could reconcile myself to having Chastain for a brother-in-law, but his parents are not to be borne.”