The Truth About Dukes Read online

  “Ivy has apparently been told that the Wilsons took her in because her parents were not married and her mother was quite young. Mr. Shaw is concerned that those antecedents have resulted in a predisposition to bad judgment and wayward behavior.”

  Constance sat up straight. “Must I kidnap her?”

  “My love, she might not take kindly to being kidnapped. If all about her are consumed with telling her what to do, how to speak, what to think, how to walk, and when to pray, she might be averse to replacing one jailer with another.” Exceedingly averse.

  “But she is my daughter.” Constance rose and crossed to the window. “I can’t lose her to the wilds of Australia now, not when she’s a mere thirty miles from me and miserable. If she wanted to leave England, I could almost learn to live with that, but now? I want to order the grays put to so I can introduce myself to her before sundown.”

  “I wouldn’t advise that, my lady,” Miss Abbott said, downing her tea. “Mr. Shaw is reported to be old-fashioned. Today is the Sabbath, and even calling upon him without a proper introduction could set you off on the wrong foot. I’ve heard nothing to suggest his departure is imminent, or that he’s an unreasonable man. You have time to consider today’s developments and confer with your family.”

  Not much time, apparently.

  “My family would be listening at the keyhole to this discussion,” Constance said, “except that Her Grace of Walden won’t allow it.”

  Robert rose to join his beloved at the window. “They are concerned for you, as I am.”

  Constance’s gaze went to the moors stretching endlessly to the west. “I am concerned for my daughter, Your Grace. I have ever been concerned for her, and now it appears she’s to be dragged off to some colonial wilderness by a scripture-spouting martinet. Ships sink, foreign climes are full of diseases, and she does not want to go. I felt the same way every time Quinn dragged us south to London.”

  Robert took Constance’s hand when he wanted to enfold her in his arms. “Miss Abbott, our thanks for all you’ve done. You will please accept Lynley Vale’s hospitality for the night, and I’m sure Lady Constance will have more questions for you later.”

  Miss Abbott gathered up her walking stick and satchel. “I need not stay the night, Your Grace, but thank you.”

  “Stay anyway,” Constance said, “please. I’d like an opportunity to discuss the matter with you further.”

  “Of course, my lady.” Miss Abbott rose, curtsied to Constance, and withdrew.

  “She’s being diplomatic,” Constance said, wandering back to the sofa and picking up the sketch. “Miss Abbott is not usually so delicate. Maybe you intimidated her. You did get a bit ducal. I was impressed.”

  “Maybe she’s castigating herself for failing to make the familial connections sooner. Come here.”

  Constance stared at the sketch a moment longer. “Do you give orders when you’re upset?”

  He gave orders when he was determined. “I need to hold you when I’m upset.” The notion of a young girl, forced to remain where she was unhappy, a loving mother unable to help, family nearby but of no use to her…Of course he was upset.

  Constance put the sketch aside and came to him, slipping her arms around his waist. “How soon can we be married?”

  “I have the special license, but I thought you wanted to wait until your sister had spoken her vows. Are you fond of shortbread?” The plate was half empty, though Robert could not recall anybody consuming so much as a single bite.

  Constance eased away. “Miss Abbott pinched it. She has a sweet tooth. I suppose we’d best get on with the family conference.”

  “In a moment.” Robert caught her by the wrist and stepped closer. “Do you know, I have yet to kiss you today?”

  Her smile was wan, but it was a smile. “You should remedy that oversight immediately, Your Grace, for I grow difficult when deprived of your kisses.”

  “Make haste, you two,” Stephen said, stopping just inside the door to the duchess’s sitting room, “we must interrogate Miss Abbott while we have the opportunity. Constance and her duke won’t be gone long.”

  Quinn and Jane exchanged a glance, which from long practice Stephen could decode easily enough: Do we ambush Miss Abbott without our brother’s meddling assistance and attempt to intimidate her with ducal consequence, or do we allow Stephen to be the disagreeable meddler—a role he plays so very well—while we personify gracious, concerned reason?

  All of that passed between them in the time it took Jane to rise and smooth her skirts. “Why exactly are Constance and Rothhaven calling on Vicar Sorenson now?”

  “Because they need a letter of introduction from him, apparently,” Stephen said. “Some of the girl’s connections are clergy, and Sorenson is likely to be at least indirectly acquainted with them. Where has Lord Nathaniel disappeared to?”

  “Wherever Althea has disappeared to,” Jane replied. The look she sent Quinn this time was a bit harder to read. Had Stephen been forced to translate, the script might have read: Just as I could once be found wherever you were, before children, duchessing, and family became such a burden on my time.

  Quinn offered Jane his arm, which was purely ridiculous when the distance to be traveled was down one sunny, carpeted corridor.

  “Tell me, baby brother, how it is you know why our sister and her intended are calling at the vicarage? Have you taken to listening at keyholes?”

  Stephen’s leg was paining him only moderately today, but the situation with Miss Ivy Wentworth—to hell with those other names—grieved him sorely. He therefore opted for more honesty than he might have chosen in other circumstances.

  “I am constitutionally incapable of listening at keyholes, but I am well aware of how chimneys connect from floor to floor in a well-built house. An unused guest room sits above the parlor where Constance and Rothhaven interviewed Miss Abbott, and when our little card game broke up, I happened to find myself near its hearth when they spoke to her.”

  He hadn’t caught every word—Constance had likely got up to pace—but he’d heard plenty.

  “Tell us what you learned before Miss Abbott joins us,” Quinn said.

  “And don’t leave anything out,” Jane added with a pleasant touch of dire duchess-threat.

  Stephen first tended to the business of situating himself in one of the library’s reading chairs. Fortunately, he didn’t ache quite badly enough to prop his foot on a hassock. For Miss Abbott to see him impersonating a gouty bachelor uncle—which he nearly was, come to think of it—would not do.

  Althea and Nathaniel arrived, and a footman was dispatched to summon Miss Abbott. Before her arrival, Stephen summarized the relevant facts for his family—uncle planning to emigrate, Ivy comporting herself like a headstrong Wentworth, dire measures under consideration.

  All in all, a fine mess, and for once, Stephen was not to blame.

  Miss Abbott arrived in the company of a footman who bowed and withdrew. Notwithstanding her escort, she’d brought her walking stick, along with her ever-present air of having business to be about. Stephen had met Wellington on several occasions, and His Grace had the same quality. The duke was not impatient so much as he seemed more interested in fighting the next battle than wasting time in civilian company.

  “Miss Abbott, please do have a seat,” Jane said. “I can ring for a tray if you’d like.”

  “No, thank you, Your Grace. I gather the family has questions.”

  “We are worried,” Althea said, “as any loving family would be.”

  Quinn and Nathaniel were trying to look lovingly concerned and were mostly looking dyspeptic, which left Stephen the job of asking the actual questions.

  “Is the girl safe for the present?” he asked.

  “You ought not to have ambushed me like this,” Miss Abbott replied, and her tone said she was using the singular you, meaning the rebuke was personal to Stephen. “This is a highly confidential matter and I do not discuss my clients’ business with anybody.”

  “We’re not anybody,” Nathaniel said, assaying a smile that he likely meant to be charming, the clodpate. “We are all the family Lady Constance has, and prepared to use our collective resources to see her objectives met.”

  “We are most anxious to be of assistance,” Althea added. “Constance is only newly engaged, and she and Rothhaven should not have to carry this burden alone.”

  “My brother’s circumstances,” Nathaniel began, as if embarking on a lecture before the slower pupils in the class, “are somewhat diffi—”

  “I know your brother’s circumstances, my lord. His Grace himself acquainted me with them by letter, including the situation in which he and Lady Constance met.”

  Well, damn. Posturing and charm would get nowhere with this woman. “Then you know much more than we do,” Stephen said, “and while I respect your protectiveness toward my sister and her duke, we are protective of them as well, and of Ivy. Is there anything you can tell us without violating confidences? Anything a casual inquiry regarding Reverend Shaw might turn up?”

  Miss Abbott palmed the head of her walking stick, which was carved to resemble—of course—a dragon.

  “You will have those inquiries made, won’t you, my lord? You’ll go barging into a small Yorkshire village, a handsome, wealthy stranger asking awkward questions and expecting honest answers simply because you rolled into the square, your London coach pulled by matching grays.”

  Stephen laid his cane across his knees and shifted pieces on his mental chessboard. Handsome, was he?

  “I will send my groom, Thomas Goodman, Yorkshire born and bred, riding a mule named George, whom Tom will stable at the livery because the poor beast will be tired after a long day’s trot. Tom will put up at the drovers’ inn outside the village, but stop by the church to give thanks for safe travels.

  “Thomas will bump into the curate,” Stephen continued, “then he’ll enjoy a pint or two at the posting inn. If all else fails, he’ll stop by the apothecary to buy a patent remedy or two for the severe rheumatism that so clearly plagues him. If market day in Fendle Bridge is Wednesday, Thomas will arrive on Tuesday afternoon, and tarry to enjoy the market. He will take particular care to flirt with the alewife, because all the friendly young fellows hang about her stall, and he will allow as how he’s bound for Liverpool, and thinking of taking ship for the Antipodes. Need I go on?”

  “You don’t have a groom named Thomas Goodman,” Althea said.

  Because a sister’s sworn duty was to un-horse her younger brother just as that good fellow had secured control of the conversation reins.

  “I like that part about the mule named George,” Miss Abbott murmured, brows knit. “A jackass or mule named for the king would be a winning touch in most livery stables, and certainly in the drovers’ inns. I must remember that.”

  “A jackass named for the king would go over well in most London gentlemen’s clubs too,” Stephen said. “As for the villagers, the apothecaries hear all the sickness and sorrow in the neighborhood. They know who cannot have children as well as who has conceived inconveniently.”

  Stephen was gambling that Miss Abbott’s sense of fair play would allow her to take a bit of pity on her hosts. She would not betray confidences, but in exchange for a few worthy ideas freely offered, she might relent a little.

  “One must approach the apothecary as a supplicant needing aid,” he added, “not simply as a nosy interloper.”

  Having patronized apothecaries since childhood, Stephen was intimately acquainted with the breed. Miss Abbott appeared to be considering his offering.

  “You give me something to think about, my lord.”

  Quinn looked like he was about to drop ducal consequence on the discussion at the exact wrong time. Stephen thus decided to entrust Miss Abbott with the truth—a risky tactic, and not one he often used.

  “Constance was bitterly unhappy as a young girl and made terrible choices as a result. She put herself at risk for serious harm, endured many hardships, and still has not entirely recovered from her youthful miseries. We would spare Ivy those same miseries if we possibly can, and spare ourselves the guilt of having failed yet another Wentworth relation when she desperately needs the support of people who mean well by her.”

  “Ivy’s uncle means well by her,” Miss Abbott replied, though she was stroking her dragon with the tip of one finger, which Stephen took to be a hopeful sign.

  Also unintentionally erotic, which was of no moment whatsoever.

  “He’s not her uncle,” Stephen said. “He’s a fellow she doesn’t obey willingly who’s intent on dragging her off to Australia, where they have deadly spiders, snakes, crocodiles, fish that can eat a man whole, and foul miasmas by the dozen. If anything happens to Ivy’s so-called uncle, what will become of her in such a place?”

  Miss Abbott met Stephen’s gaze, and he realized what had been bothering him about her—besides her confidence, brains, and air of iron resolution. She was pretty, beautiful even, though all her stomping about and thumping her walking stick, as well as her drab clothing and a severe bun, were intended to hide her looks. She was bloodstock trying to impersonate a mule, and mostly succeeding.

  “Ivy is pretty, isn’t she?” Stephen asked, quietly.

  “Lovely,” Miss Abbott replied in equally soft tones. “Has the most gorgeous red hair, and she’s nearly taller than her uncle. Men hate that. Some men.”

  “A pretty girl,” Stephen mused, “fourteen years old or nearly so, on her own in Australia, where she never wanted to be, where she never had to be…Anything you can tell us, Miss Abbott, anything, would be appreciated.”

  She looked around the room, taking in Althea and Nathaniel practically sitting in each other’s laps on the sofa, and Quinn and Jane, equally connected but more dignified about their relationship, and then Stephen, alone in a reading chair, and—as always—clutching his cane.

  “I can tell you this,” Miss Abbott said. “Whitlock Shaw has no congregation here in England because he does not get on well with the bishops.”

  “Does he have a temper?” Quinn asked, seeking information any Wentworth needed to know about any parental authority figure.

  “Not a temper, so much as convictions, Your Grace. Mr. Shaw detests everything high church. He blames the Church of England’s corruption and greed for the rise of Methodism and dissenters of every stripe. He had a pulpit down near Manchester, but he fell out with the earl who held the living. The earl wanted to replace a plain window with stained glass, and Mr. Shaw refused. The dispute escalated, and Mr. Shaw was succeeded by a vicar willing to glorify God’s house with man-made beauty.”

  “He lost his job over a window?” Jane sounded dismayed rather than impressed.

  “Over a principle,” Stephen said. “I take it that experience has left the reverend intolerant of aristocrats?”

  “Exactly, my lord. Mr. Shaw has been heard to say that the colonies are the only hope for salvation on earth because they tend to be less infested with lords, bishops, and other moral pestilences. He believes the aristocracy embodies the deadly sins and all that’s wrong with Britain.”

  “He’s not entirely wrong,” Quinn said.

  “While you are entirely a duke, Your Grace,” Miss Abbott replied, gently. “Lady Constance is marrying another duke. Had you been millers, yeoman, engravers, or teachers, Mr. Shaw would view you more favorably, according to what I know of him. As it is, the last people he’s likely to allow near Ivy are a bunch of wealthy, titled strangers.”

  “Then we will be family rather than strangers,” Jane said. “My father is clergy. His congregation is out in the West Riding. Surely that will mean something to Mr. Shaw?”

  “I don’t know, Your Grace. If your father supports the church’s traditional thinking, it might be yet another strike against the Wentworths.”

  “Have you told Constance and Rothhaven what you’re telling us now?” Stephen asked.

  “Not yet, but I will. His Grace expressed a willingness to fund Mr. Shaw’s ambitions, and I don’t think that approach well advised.”

  Nathaniel rose, extending a hand to Althea. “Then Mr. Shaw is an idiot. My brother is obnoxiously wealthy. Shaw could build the first cathedral in the whole of Australia with Rothhaven’s pocket change.”

  Althea took Nathaniel’s hand and stood as well, though she’d been getting to her feet unassisted for as long as Stephen could recall.

  “I don’t think this Mr. Shaw sets much store by cathedrals, my lord,” Althea observed.

  They remained hand in hand, close enough to embrace. “He sets store by something,” Nathaniel said. “We just have to deduce what it is.”

  They left, heads close together, apparently intent on further discussions of a private nature. Quinn and Jane withdrew on assurances that they would consider what Miss Abbott had imparted, and do anything in their power to aid Constance’s objectives.

  Leaving Stephen alone, unchaperoned with a relatively young, unmarried female who looked anything but pleased at the prospect of bearing him company.

  “I am harmless,” he said, gesturing with his cane. “They mean you no disrespect by leaving you here with me. The door will remain open at all times. You have only to holler for a footman or tug the bell pull should I teeter menacingly in your direction.”

  He didn’t bother with a charming smile. Miss Abbott would cosh him on general principles should he be so foolish.

  “That is a handsome sword cane,” she said, glancing at the door. “Might I examine it more closely, my lord?”

  Oh, she was a dear when she was trying to come across all hesitant and respectful. “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours,” Stephen said, holding out his cane.

  She rose, closed the door, and traded him her sword cane for his.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Weatherby, the case could not be simpler,” Neville said, keeping his voice down amid the hum of multiple conversations. The club was busier than usual for noon on a Monday, and nobody could out-gossip lawyers.