Almost a Bride Page 9

  He marched to the door. “I shall pay a visit upon the duke of St. Jules without delay and we’ll put this right.”

  “My dear sir, are you acquainted with his grace?” Lady Barratt inquired.

  “Not personally. We would hardly move in the same circles,” Sir Mark said shortly. “But the man’s reputation goes before him. He’s a rake and a rogue. No self-respecting female would be in the same room with him.”

  “Interesting . . . every cloud has a silver lining,” murmured Meg for Arabella’s ears alone. Arabella suppressed a grin at this example of her friend’s irrepressible irreverence. She could always rely on Meg to raise her spirits however dire the situation. And it was true, whatever else she might think of the duke of St. Jules, he was certainly interesting.

  “I believe his grace is out of the house at present, Sir Mark,” she said as the baronet laid a hand on the door latch. She added the small lie, “I saw him ride out as I left.”

  “Oh, then I shall ride over to Alsop’s and discuss this disgraceful matter with him.” The door shut with a decisive click on Sir Mark’s departure.

  “Yes, just leave it to Sir Mark. He’ll soon have everything put to rights, Arabella dear,” Lady Barratt said with her customary confidence in her husband. “And of course you will remain here.”

  Much as she hated the idea of upsetting her friends, Arabella knew that she could not run into their arms, yielding all control over her future. However bleak it was, it belonged only to her. She had to make her own decisions however hard they might be and she was determined that she would not be a burden on anyone.

  “You are very kind, ma’am,” she said carefully. “But I must remain at home for the present. I’m expecting a consignment of orchids from Surinam any day now. Very delicate . . . precious specimens. I must be there to receive them. They were very expensive, you see.” She offered an apologetic smile but swept on before there could be any further objection. “Also, I have two orders for my own crossbreeds that I’ve promised to ship as soon as possible. Only I can do that.”

  “Orchids,” exclaimed Lady Barratt. “How could orchids take precedence over your reputation?”

  Arabella’s conciliatory smile did little to mask her inner determination. “My reputation is in no danger, ma’am,” she said. “I’m well past the age of discretion, as you must agree.”

  “My dear, that’s really not the point,” her ladyship said with a worried frown.

  “But I don’t see why it should be considered unrespectable for me to reside under the same roof as my brother’s successor,” Arabella pressed. “The duke’s well past the age of discretion himself, ma’am.” She somehow hoped to convey the impression of an elderly bewhiskered gentleman rapidly approaching his dotage, but she could see that Lady Barratt was unconvinced by this argument. How she’d react when she saw the duke of St. Jules in the flesh could only be imagined.

  Resolutely she continued, “Besides, ma’am, it won’t be for very long. I have already written to my mother’s relatives in Cornwall. I’m hoping that they will have a small cottage on the estate that I could use.”

  “Oh, my dear, what would your mother have said?” Her ladyship waved her fan, her distress apparent in her flushed cheeks.

  Arabella wondered if she would have found herself in this parlous situation had her mother lived beyond her daughter’s fifth year. Surely she would have championed her daughter, insisted on some kind of provision for her. But there was nothing to be gained by might-have-beens. She didn’t really know what kind of woman her mother had been. Strong and independent? Weak and under her husband’s thumb? Lady Barratt had never really managed to convey an accurate impression of Virginia Lacey.

  She swallowed an involuntary sigh and said, “I assure you, ma’am, I will conduct myself irreproachably.”

  “Oh, yes, of course you will . . . but this man, the duke . . . a rogue . . . a rake . . . oh, what is to be done?” She shook her head and the lace bows on her cap bobbed.

  Meg tapped her lips with her steepled fingers. She could see the battle lines being drawn and she knew rather better than her parents exactly how resolute Arabella could be when her mind was made up. But maybe it was too soon for her friend to have made an irrevocable decision.

  “I don’t think we can decide anything until we know more,” she said, her own deep frown drawing her thin, arched eyebrows together. “It would be best if we let the dust settle and then perhaps we can all think more clearly.” She rose from her chair and went round to her mother to plant an affectionate kiss on the lady’s heated cheek.

  Lady Barratt gave a heavy sigh. “Well, we’ll just have to wait until your father returns.”

  Meg murmured a reassuring assent and she and Arabella left the breakfast parlor. They went without consultation upstairs to Meg’s old schoolroom that now served as her private parlor. Several generations of children had inhabited this small paneled room with its scuffed oak floor and scarred window seat and it still smelled faintly of chalk and slate. The furniture was shabby, the colors of the cushions and the threadbare turkey rug sun-faded, the spines of the books rubbed smooth. But it was homely and comfortable, a copper bowl of marigolds blazing in the empty grate, one of Arabella’s orchids blooming, wonderfully exotic, on a gateleg table, and they closed the door with a mutual sigh of relief.

  Meg deposited her thin, angular frame on the threadbare cushion of the window seat and regarded her best friend with intent curiosity in the intelligent green eyes, her small head to one side. “So fill in the missing pieces, Bella.”

  Arabella pulled at her earlobe. She had expected Meg to know that only the bare bones of the story had been told in the breakfast parlor and she had no desire to hide anything from her even if she could. The two girls had shared first a governess and then a tutor when it became clear to Sir Mark that they would benefit from more than the ordinary education considered appropriate for girls destined for marriage, and the years of shared education had left both well able to read the other’s mind.

  “So, tell, Bella,” Meg repeated when her friend remained silent for a few minutes.

  Arabella started hesitantly. “I was in the conservatory, all hot and sweaty and grubby, when this duke just walked in without warning, looking, I might add, utterly immaculate,” she declared with some disgust. “You can imagine what I looked like.”

  “Easily,” Meg agreed sympathetically. To a certain extent she shared Arabella’s general disregard for appearances. “But since you were working, and it was in your own house, after all, I fail to see what business it might be of his.”

  Arabella smiled reluctantly at her friend’s typically fiery defense. “He didn’t exactly comment,” she said. “But he looked.”

  “He looked you over, found you wanting, and then he told you that he’d killed your brother and was throwing you out of house and home?” Meg demanded incredulously.

  “There wasn’t much finesse about it, certainly,” Arabella agreed. “But he didn’t say he was throwing me out, he said I could stay at Lacey Court as long as I liked.” She turned away from Meg’s sharp green gaze, aware of a slight flush on her cheeks.

  Meg’s eyes narrowed. “That sounds remarkably like an indecent proposal to me.”

  Arabella turned back with a slight self-conscious laugh. “That was my initial reaction. However, it turns out his grace had a rather different proposal in mind.” She paused, her eyes abstracted suddenly as she thought over that proposal.

  Meg waited, holding her breath. “Bella,” she protested finally, “for God’s sake. You always do this. You start something and then just stop at the good part. Tell me!”

  “Oh, sorry.” Arabella came to with a start. “Well, not to put too fine a point on it, Meg, he asked me to marry him.”

  Meg’s eyes became wide as saucers. “He went down on one knee and proposed?”

  Arabella shook her head and couldn’t help laughing at the absurd image of the elegant and composed duke of St. Jules on o
ne knee. “No, nothing like that. It was a straightforward proposition: I need a wife and heirs; you need a home.”

  “Had he ever seen you before? I mean, did he know you at all?” Meg was having trouble with the concept.

  “No,” Arabella said flatly. “And he was kind enough to tell me that he had a perfectly satisfactory mistress, so all he really wants is a legitimate heir.”

  “He sounds like a positive coxcomb,” declared Meg with impassioned disgust. “I hope you gave him a thoroughly dusty answer.”

  “Of course,” Arabella stated with much the same passion. “What do you take me for?”

  Meg gazed down at her sprig muslin lap, tracing a flower with a fingertip. “Of course,” she said slowly, “in different circumstances there could be some advantages in such a marriage.”

  “They’d have to be very different,” Arabella said with a touch of acid. “But no, I’m not blind to the advantages of being married to a rich duke. I’d just prefer to come by him in a rather more conventional fashion.”

  “And he did drive your brother to his death,” Meg murmured. “I didn’t have much time for Frederick, and he made your life a living hell when he was around, but still, there’s something a bit”—she shuddered slightly—“a touch of the devil about such a death.”

  Arabella nodded somberly. “I feel the same. And in truth, Meg, there’s a touch of the devil about the duke of St. Jules.”

  Meg looked up from her skirt. There was a spark suddenly in her eye. “I’ve always rather liked the idea of playing with fire.”

  “I know you have,” Arabella said, jumping up from the low armless chair where she’d been sitting. “But there’s a difference between playing with it and being consumed by it.” She paced the room, her striped muslin skirts swinging around her with each agitated step.

  Meg watched her for a minute, then said shrewdly, “Have you been a little scorched already, Bella?”

  Arabella stopped pacing. She spoke with slow deliberation. “Meg, he marched into my house, proceeded to take it over, insisted on my company at the dinner table, and then kissed me. What do you think?”

  “I think you have a point.” Meg nodded slowly, the spark in her eyes now fully aflame. “A good kiss?” she inquired, with genuine curiosity.

  Arabella picked up a cushion and hurled it at her. Meg, laughing, ducked and twisted on the window seat to catch the cushion as it hit the glass behind her. “Oh,” she said, her head still turned towards the window. “It looks like your duke has come back for you.”

  “What?” Arabella moved to the window. The duke of St. Jules was leaning idly against the gatepost, his face lifted towards the sun. A perfect picture of contentment.

  “Bella, that is a most elegant and very handsome duke,” Meg pronounced.

  “I didn’t say he wasn’t,” Arabella said somewhat defensively. “But that doesn’t alter the facts. He’s a rake and a rogue, you heard your father say so. He’s an inveterate gambler who’s quite prepared in cold blood to drive a man to his death—”

  “There is something of the devil about him,” Meg interrupted in musing tones. “A certain indefinable hint of something.”

  “It’s menace,” Arabella said firmly. “He exudes menace.”

  “I can see what you mean,” Meg said thoughtfully, leaning her forehead against the glass to get a better look. “I wonder if it’s that streak of white in his hair. It gives him a most fascinating look.”

  “He’s as dangerous as that rapier of his,” Arabella stated. “And he has some ulterior motive for being here, for this absurd proposal . . . for driving Frederick to suicide. I’m convinced of it.”

  Meg nodded. “Yes, I’m sure you’re right. Ah,” she said suddenly. “This is going to be interesting.”

  “What?” Arabella knelt on the window seat beside her friend. Sir Mark Barratt was walking down the path towards the stranger at his gate. Two mastiffs paced at his heels, their hackles up. With a sense of the inevitable, Arabella watched as the duke clicked his fingers and the two massive dogs came to him, bending their heads for a pat.

  “Lord love us,” Meg whispered. “Those brutes put the fear of the devil into everyone except my father.”

  “I tell you, Meg, if Jack Fortescu charms your father as well, then he is the devil incarnate,” Arabella stated. “Those beasts are merely acknowledging their master.”

  Meg went into a peal of laughter even as her gaze remained riveted on the scene at the gate. They couldn’t hear what was being said but the duke was smiling, very much at his ease. He seemed to be explaining something and Sir Mark was listening without making any attempt to interrupt. The mastiffs were now lying on the grass, as peaceful and unmenacing as a pair of miniature poodles. Once or twice the baronet glanced down at them, clearly puzzled at this extraordinary docility from his watchdogs.

  “Poor father, he doesn’t know what to think,” Meg observed. “What’s your duke saying to him?”

  “He’s not my duke,” Arabella denied automatically.

  “Well, look at that,” Meg exclaimed. “You’re right. The devil incarnate.”

  Sir Mark was heartily shaking the hand of his visitor and with a hospitable gesture urging him into the house.

  “He has father eating out of his hand,” Meg said in awed tones. “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

  “I never said he couldn’t be charming when he chose,” Arabella commented. “But can you give me one good reason why I would marry someone who had forced my hand. And why my hand? Why would Jack Fortescu pick on me?”

  “Reparation,” Meg suggested.

  “That was exactly what he said. But I don’t believe it. There’s something else.” Arabella got off the window seat and resumed her restless pacing. “Besides, I’m not willing to be reduced to the status of some poor female who, no longer protected by her family, has to be taken care of by the man guilty of depriving her of that protection.”

  “No, of course not,” Meg agreed rapidly. “That’s a dreadful prospect. We both know that we couldn’t accept something like that. We could have been married years ago if we were willing to make those kinds of compromises. Of course you can’t give up your independence, but is there another way of looking at it, perhaps?”

  “I don’t see how,” Arabella said. “I’m being offered a simple exchange: Be a complaisant wife, let my husband do as he pleases, and take him into my bed whenever he demands it.” Her tone was biting.

  Meg considered this. “Just for the sake of argument, because of course we both know you’re not going to accept his proposition . . . but it seems to me that if he required you to look the other way when he had liaisons, then you could surely require the same courtesy.” She regarded her friend thoughtfully. “Assuming that you’d be interested in a lover.”

  “I haven’t had your experience, Meg,” Arabella said with a half laugh. “Everything I know about the delights of the bedchamber I learned from you.”

  Meg gave a mock sigh. “It was so long ago, I’ve almost forgotten it.”

  “It’ll come back when you have the opportunity.”

  “Who am I going to find in this backwater?” Meg demanded. “I’ve had my one London Season, and nothing came of that, so I’m condemned to look for a mate among the spotty youths or drunken squires of Kent.”

  “That or live the life we always swore would satisfy us,” Arabella pointed out. “We took a blood oath when we were ten that we would keep our independence before anything else and any man would have to accept that.”

  Meg shook her head with a laugh. “That was all very well at ten, Bella. But I haven’t met a man who would accept such terms and neither have you. My problem is that I’m not sure I actually want to spend the rest of my life in a state of chaste spinsterhood. Are you?”

  “Not really,” Arabella said, sounding dispirited. A future as a poor relation in a tied cottage in Cornwall was depressing enough.

  A knock at the
door interrupted the ensuing thoughtful silence. “Come in,” Meg called.

  A maid bobbed a curtsy in the doorway. “Beggin’ your pardon, Miss Meg, but Sir Mark wondered if you and Lady Arabella would join him in the library.”

  The two women exchanged a glance. If the duke had managed to enlist the support of the baronet in a mere half hour, he was even more formidable than they’d thought.

  “We’ll come down in five minutes, Madge,” Meg said. When the door had closed on the maid, she said to Arabella, “He really must have my father eating out of his hand. What could he have said to him?”

  “I would guess he has rather forcefully presented the benefits to me in accepting his proposal,” Arabella returned dryly. “Your father has always seen himself in loco parentis, even before my father’s death, really. And after Father died, Sir Mark never made any secret of his contempt for Frederick. I suspect he’s convinced himself, and probably your mother by now too, that there’s a perfect solution to my problems, and the duke is an impeccable connection.”

  “Rogue and rake though he may be,” Meg murmured, standing on tiptoe at the mirror to push loosened pins back into her red mane.

  “Oh, I’m sure Jack’s convinced your parents that he’s the Archangel Gabriel,” Arabella replied tartly.

  Meg heard the casual use of the duke’s name and cast Arabella a quick glance. But she made no comment. These waters were running deep and it was for Arabella to choose how to sail them. Meg would offer whatever support and backup was needed in the face of pressure from her parents. And there was going to be plenty of that, as they were both aware.

  She linked arms with her friend, giving her a quick encouraging kiss on the cheek, and they went out into the corridor.

  Chapter 6

  Ah, Bella, my dear. Meg, dear, come in, come in,” Sir Mark greeted them warmly as they entered the library. His lady sat in an upright armless chair, holding her closed fan in her lap. She had the rather bemused air of one who had suddenly found herself transported to some other planet.