A Duke for Christmas (3 page)

“Man?” Sophie followed his gaze and saw Mr. Knox talking to the girls. His Italian was not as good as hers, but both Angelina and Lucia were paying close attention, not giggling as they usually did when any non-Italian tried to speak to them.

“Oh, that’s Clarence Knox. He was a friend of my husband’s. He’s a poet, too.”

Mr. Knox looked up and caught sight of her. He smiled at her in the way that she’d come half-consciously to dread. It held too much warmth, too much hope. One she could not return, and the other she could not bring herself to dash. Now they had come home, this friendship she had inherited would fade without the necessity of hurting his feelings. It could never ripen into anything else. Mr. Knox resembled Broderick too much in tone of mind to attract her. Besides, her tastes had never run to men shorter than herself with hair carefully brushed to conceal its thinning. Even that wouldn’t have prevented her if she’d found almost childlike round blue eyes and snub noses appealing.

Dominic followed her across the dock, his footsteps firm and slow. She’d forgotten how tall he was. “Your Grace, may I present Mr. Clarence Knox? Mr. Knox, this is the Duke of Saltaire.”

Mr. Knox actually took a step back, as anyone might when suddenly confronted with an inoffensive young man who turned out to have a title and a fortune reputed to be majestic in scope. Dominic hardly seemed to notice the man’s reaction. Perhaps he was used to it by now.

They shook hands in that very cool English style. Sophie compared it to the sometimes overwhelming enthusiasm of the Italian male and knew she had truly come home.

“Could you tell them where to send the luggage?” she asked Dominic, indicating the several crew members bringing down trunks on their shoulders. Most were dumped in front of the Gibbses.

“Certainly,” he said, stepping away.

“I had no notion that you were acquainted with anyone of such high degree,” Mr. Knox said in her ear. “Is that the famous Duke of Saltaire?”

“Famous? I don’t know if I would describe him so.”

“Come now, you must know the story. How he was a poverty-stricken nobody until careful investigation uncovered the truth. I believe Armstrong Blevely was writing an epic on the subject.”

“Armstrong wrote many an epic—in his head,” Sophie said tartly. “Never a one on paper that I ever heard tell of. The last I heard, he’d taken a position in his uncle’s relish manufactory.” Her late husband had poured scorn on the fallen poet for his choosing Gentlemen’s Pickle over the divine fee, but Sophie herself only wished that there’d been a going concern connected with the name of Banner, even if it had been connected with marmalade or horseshoe nails.

“Alas, poor Blevely,” Mr. Knox said, shaking his head.

“Still, it’s a tale worthy of an epic. I heard tell he was working in a blacksmith’s when they told him he was the heir to a dukedom.”

“No. He was a writer.”

“A writer?”

“Grub Street, I believe. But we’ve never actually discussed the matter.” Not, at least, in any circumstances that she’d care to share.

“What a fate to befall one,” Mr. Knox said, half to himself. “So much wealth and fine position and all through a mere accident of fate.” He smiled at her, returning to the present. “Ah, well, no such fairies attended my christening,” he said ruefully. “My father was a simple justice of the peace whose family line was as clear as a black line upon white paper. Not the slightest chance that some surprising rich relations will suddenly point to me and say, ‘Thou art the man to inherit my riches.’ More’s the pity. I shall have to win my fortune by other means.”

“Your pen, perhaps?”

His eyes suddenly moist, Mr. Knox reached out to grasp her hands. “Poor Broderick was taken from us too soon,” he said earnestly. “I know, had he lived longer, we all would have been the better for it. Not just you, his loving wife, and I, his dearest friend, but the world will suffer from the loss of his talents, whether it knows it or not.”

“Yes,” she said, moved more for his sake than for her own. “I shall do what I can to bring his work to the world.”

“Then you mean to proceed with publication?”

“If I can. I owe it to his memory.”

He raised her hands to his chest and pressed them there. “If I can be of any assistance in this great work, I pray ... I beg ... you will call upon me. Though you kept Broderick’s heart, I feel I had some insight into the workings of his mind. I would gladly give all my time to your aid.”

With an effort, she freed her captive hands. “You’re too kind, Mr. Knox. I have your address in town. If I need your help, be assured I shall call for it.”

Sophie became aware that Dominic waited for her. With a bright smile that belied her true feelings, she said good-bye to Mr. Knox. Picking up one of her valises, she motioned to the two Italian girls to follow her.
“Andiamo, mia ragazzi.
Follow the gentleman.”

Dominic seemed to be scanning the faces of the dockside idlers. “Ah, there he is,” he said. “And he’s brought a barrow for your baggage.”

“Your servant?” she asked, eyeing the ragtag figure approaching.

“No, but I’m considering attaching him to my service. He’s an unusual character. I’d best not, though. He’d give my valet an apoplexy.”

Strange to walk arm-in-arm with anyone but Broderick. Dominic Swift was much taller than her late husband, and Sophie was surprised to find how comforting it was to press through a crowd with him. His care to guard her from the carelessness of passing strangers was equaled by his ability to do so. No one had ever stepped aside for Broderick, no matter how he swaggered. But roads seemed to open when Dominic came near and it couldn’t be that everyone knew who he was. He wasn’t
that
famous.

She kept her eyes upon the two girls, smiling at them reassuringly whenever they looked back. Angelina was rolling her eyes from side to side like a frightened horse, amazed and frightened by strange sights, sounds, and smells. Lucia also looked around her, but, as had been true from the start of their acquaintance, it was with lively curiosity and the most intense desire to acquire knowledge. Before them, as if leading a procession, came the beached sailor, pushing the barrow and keeping up a constant commentary as if he’d appointed himself guide and preceptor to the two foreigners, little though they might understand.

It seemed a long way to the inn. She had cause to be glad of Dom’s arm. “I am not accustomed to walking more than the length of the deck,” she panted at the top of a hill. “I had no notion I was so out of condition.”

“Do you still feel the motion of the boat?”

“Not so much, though I should be glad to sit down. And, oh, a cup of tea. Real tea. I’ve been dreaming of it every night.”

“Don’t they have tea in Italy?”

She peeped up at him suspiciously. Was he laughing at her? His face remained grave but there was a smile in his voice.

“Yes, they do. But it’s rather expensive and somehow never tastes right. I think it’s the water in Rome.”

His smile broke through his reserve. “I think the Golden Hind will run to a cup of tea. Perhaps even an entire pot.”

“Then let’s hurry.” Having caught her breath, she tried to pull him along. She might as well have tried to pull the
Attendez Moi,
though he consented to move at last with a resigned smile upon his face.

When she reached her bedchamber, the landlady was there, stripping the sheets off the bed. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” Sophie said, hesitating on the threshold.

“You are Mrs. Banner? That valet told me to change your linen. As if sheets in my house are ever damp!”

She stood with her hands on her thin hips, her woolen overskirt kilted up to show a flowered flannel petticoat underneath. Her white cap was shoved back on her graying hair and she bore harassed lines on her forehead.

“I’m sorry for the extra trouble,” Sophie said. “What valet is this?”

“A lanky pin-shanks by the name of Fissing. He’s poked his long nose into my kitchens, dug in my cellars, and sneered at my sheets. I’ll pull his long nose if I see it again, so help me.”

“He’s the Duke’s man?”

“Aye, he is. To hear him speak, you’d think this house had never entertained any titled folk before. Why, the Earl of Kinton himself was pleased to praise my shortbread. And Lady Moira O’Connell told me that if I ever was wishful to stop running this inn, she’d take me on as housekeeper without a second thought. And at a very good stipend too, for all it’d mean living in Ireland.”

Though tired and desiring nothing more than a few minutes of quiet before the fire in a room that did not swoop with wave and wind, Sophie set herself to calming the landlady’s ruffled feathers. She stepped forward to catch the upper edge of the fresh sheet to pull it straight. “Mmm,” she hummed, breathing in. “Is that lavender I smell? Such a pleasant change from the ship’s bilges.”

“So I should think indeed. Never will I lay a sheet away without sprigs of dried herbs between. Keeps off the moth and keeps the cupboard sweet Now, never you mind, missus ...”

“It’s no trouble,” Sophie said brightly, reaching for a pillowcase. “Many hands make light work, you know, Mrs—?”

“Cricklewood, ma’am. Mrs. Thomas Cricklewood. He’s been gone to his reward these five years come Michaelmas.”

“I see. Do you find it difficult to carry on here without him?”

Mrs. Cricklewood started to answer and then hesitated. A distant expression came into her eyes, as if she’d never considered the question before. Then she nodded. “There was so much to be done, and nothing to do but to see it through.”

“So true,” Sophie said. “The first three months are a blur to me now. Then to find a way to come home and all that that entailed with no more help than I could find from the consulate in Rome. They were kind, but there was so much to do on my own.”

“You’re too young to be a widow,” Mrs. Cricklewood said flatly.

“I feel that, too. But here I am, nonetheless.”

Mrs. Cricklewood pursed her lips and gave a last emphatic thump to the pillow. “I’ll bring you some hot water and a pot of tea. Just home from foreign parts, I reckon tea’s the first thing you’ll care to take aboard.”

“Oh, yes, please. And the two young ladies that were with me ... where are they? They speak no English.”

“They’ll be one flight up, Mrs. Banner, though what you want with a pair of handless foreigners when there are good English girls going wanting ...”

“That’s a long story, but they have been good to me. I must see they are comfortable.”

“Well, we all know our own business best. I’ll be about your tea, if that Fissing will let me near my own kettle.”

After sharing a narrow cabin for ten days with both the Ferrara sisters, being alone was the greatest possible luxury. Neither girl was a difficult companion when not seasick, though Lucia’s sulky beauty attracted too much attention from the sailors. But the constant presence of other people had rubbed Sophie’s soul raw. She had grown used to solitude in the last year and had treasured it.

Laying aside her bonnet and cloak, she caught sight of herself in the pier glass beside the washstand. Thanks to the cold, she’d been unable to see what the women of England were wearing under their warm outerwear. The last
Ladies’ Magazine
she’d seen was eighteen months old, and even had she liked the styles, she could not have afforded a new dress.

She hardly believed herself to be in the mode, even if it might have swung back to the fashions of three years before. This dark wool day dress had been part of her bride clothes, now dyed for mourning with indifferent success. In some lights, it looked the color of the bladderwrack that floated on the sea, in others an odd bronze-green. Her mother was as clever a needlewoman as lived and had much store of fabric laid by. Surely once home, she’d find new things to wear. There was no point in taking in the waist of this dress anymore, even if it did fit her little better than her boat cloak. Food at home would be plentiful, more than enough to help her regain her former contours. She did look gaunt, her cheeks all fallen in. No one would take her for thirty, let alone a few months shy of twenty-one.

Stepping closer, she looked into her own eyes. The frankness and confidence that had once shown so bravely there were gone forever. Now she looked at the world as one who would wince if only her will would permit such a show of weakness. She could eat her fill, pinch her cheeks to make them pink, and do her hair in ringlets and ribbons, but what could she do about her eyes?
A fringe,
she thought,
or a veil.

At a tap on the door, she called, “Come in,” and, as if these were magic words, a parade of wonders entered. A maid with a silver tray loaded with translucent porcelain cups and a pot with fascinating curls of steam emerging from the spout preceded a stoutly calved youth pushing in a slipper tub. Two pert girls with brass cans of water, the cooler air condensing on the sides to send drips of water falling to the floor, were followed by a superior sort of servant in a black suit of clothes. He was very tall and thin, with a nose that could have given Wellington’s two lengths and still romp home. Sophie had no difficulty identifying him, but it took considerable command to keep from laughing, for she could well imagine Mrs. Cricklewood having little patience with such an exquisite personage.

“You must be Fissing,” she said. “I must thank you for all your care of me.”

“His Grace’s orders, ma’am,” he answered with a bow correct to the millimeter for both a widow and a friend of his master’s. “He asks if you would deign to dine with him this evening.”

“I’d be more than happy,” she said, wondering if his respectful bow factored into account her evident poverty. In this she did him an injustice, as she realized a moment later. It was his own consequence he honored, not hers. He directed the tub to be set thus, the tea tray so, and the attendant maidens could not pour the bath water until he tested it with a thermometer he withdrew from his pocket. His gracious nod of permission would have looked well coming from a bishop.

“I have taken the liberty, ma’am, of opening your bags. If it pleases you, I should like to take an iron to several of your gowns so that you may choose one for this evening.”