An Apple Pie for a Duke (2 page)

Finally,
the vicious creature grinned like a pixie, got back to her feet,
dusted herself off and returned to her friend.

“
Let's
try the cider, shall we?”

“
Oh
yes, let's! Although
you
will taste wine and
champagne as soon as the London season starts, while I stay here on
bread and water.”

“
Poor
little Lizzy.” Gigi poked her friend into the ribs. “Well I don't
think I shall drink much when I'm in London. I don't wish to make a
fool out of myself in front of all those potential husbands.” She
wrinkled her nose at the word “husband”.

Lizzy
tried a sip of cider and nodded approvingly.

“
You'll
have to marry
one
of them
in
the end.”

“
Indeed.”
Gigi pulled a face.

“
Maybe
you’ll meet the duke and he’ll marry you!”

Dominic
stiffened. At least those parts of him, which had not stiffened
earlier.

“
I
do
not
think so,” Gigi,
or
Eugenia, or
whatever her bloody name is,
proclaimed
.

“
Yes!
You’re so pretty and he isn't married, is he?”

“
We
would’ve read about that,” Gigi conceded. “But I’m not as
noble as that. And anyway, I don't think I'd want to marry him. He's
too sinister. Too dangerous.”

The
girls finished the bottle, still giggling.

 “
I
think I'm feeling a little tipsy now,” the devilish Eugenia
muttered and wiped her pouting lips.

Lizzy
took hold of her friend's arm. “You must promise me, if he
proposes, that you'll accept him! No, you must
swear
!”

Gigi
wrinkled her nose again.
“
Fine,
fine... In the unlikely event of His Grace of Surrey asking me to be
his wife, I swear I shall accept.”

“
Swear
on Mr. Wimple's life!”

“
No,
Lizzy. I couldn't!”

“
Yes,
you can and you will. Swear on it!”

Eugenia
pulled loose from her friend. “Alright, Lizzy, I swear on the life
of my beloved Mr. Wimple that I shall accept the Duke of Surrey's
hand in marriage, if he should ever propose to me.”

Dominic
did not know who Mr. Wimple was but it made him feel uneasy that the
life of the poor man should depend on the mood of such a hoydenish
female.

Lizzy
got up.
“
Well,
Your Grace, I have to be off. There is plenty work to be done for my
sister's wedding and mother will start wondering what has become of
me.”

“
Yes,
you are perfectly right. It'll be lunchtime soon and Papa won't be
happy if I'm late.”

Lizzy
saluted in a military fashion.

Gigi
did the same. “Good bye, Lizzy and good bye future husband's
beautiful horse.”

She
picked her hat up from the floor, put it back on her curls and
dragged her pony out of the stable. Lizzy followed suit.

Dominic
was alone once again.

He
waited a while before he climbed down the bolder and groggily set his
feet to the ground.

Coeur
de Lion watched him with disinterest.

The
horse still sported crumbs of apple pie on its nose.

“
Traitor,”
Dominic groaned. “Can't you ever keep silent? Don't you know what
you've just done?”

2.

Seventree,
Surrey, April 1821

“
Did
you say London?” Elizabeth Barnham, Countess of Chestendon,
repeated for the third time as she stared at her older brother in
astonishment. “You did not say London, did you, Dominic? Did you
really say London?”

“
What
is it, Betty, that you find so shocking about me going to London? I
do it all the time.”

“
Indeed
you do, my dear, but never during the season. You hate the season!
Apart from the races of course. But London! Are you finally thinking
of getting married? As you well know you should?”

“
Don't
be ridiculous,” Dominic hissed. “I have no intention of getting
married before I’m gouty and old.”

His
sister raised his voice a little. “Somebody might shoot you in a
duel, Dominic! You might fall off a horse and break a neck!”

“
A
neck? You have
peculiar ideas about my anatomy,” Dominic grinned.

Elizabeth
frowned. “You know what I mean.”

“
I've
yet to meet the man who can surpass me in shooting and the horse that
can throw me off.”

“
You
are arrogant and haughty.” To underline her opinion Elizabeth
tapped her elegant fan against the tea table.

 “
I'm
Surrey. What else would I be?”

Elizabeth
sighed, unwilling to fight with her older brother. She was expecting
her third child in the early summer and did not enjoy verbal parrying
as much as she used to.

Dominic
left her to the novel she had been reading before he had intruded
upon her to inform her of his decision to move to his London house at
Grosvenor Square for the rest of spring.

***

He
had finally given in to temptation.

Not
one day had passed since that bizarre encounter with Gigi the pirate
at that horrid inn in Yorkshire when he had not repeated the scene in
his mind over and over again.

The
beautiful girl…

The
way she had moved and sighed his name…

It
kept him awake at night and when he finally fell asleep, his dreams
were full of her.

He
had
to see her again to
rid himself of that awful spell. Experience had taught him that,
often enough, a woman who seemed irresistible at the first encounter
was only mediocre at the second.

He
had at least found out who she was.

She
was the Honourable Eugenia Cartwright, daughter of the former General
Cartwright now Baron Cartwright, who was a war hero of many battles
and second husband to the former Countess of Rivendon. Eugenia was
their only child.

The
Countess Rivendon had lost her first husband and two sons in a
terrible coaching accident when Dominic had been only a child. If he
remembered correctly, she had even been friends with his late mother.

He'd
have to ask his man Markston to remind him how to address the
remarried widow of an earl who was now married to a baron. Dominic
usually prided himself on his impeccable knowledge of social
complexities, as was the duty of any peer, but his valet was – as
is often the case with valets – a pedantic
connoisseur
of the
ton
and all its
intricacies.

Yet,
why should I even speak to Countess Rivendon, Baroness Cartwright or
whatever she calls herself nowadays? I have no interest in that
family. I only want to get rid of my belligerent obsession with her
daughter. I can't walk up to her and say “Lady Such or Such, I keep
having this dream of your beloved virgin daughter riding me astride.
There's apple pie involved, too. What's to be done?”

He
felt the blood rush into his face as his thoughts lingered on the
images of that particular dream. Maybe he had been ill that day at
the stable. Maybe it had been a fever.

Whatever
it had been, he would find out and soon.

3.

Bond
Street, London, April 1821

The
Honourable Eugenia Cartwright demurely kept her eyes down as she
walked along Bond Street, accompanied by her mother, her aunt and
several maids. After two weeks of the London season she felt
exhausted. The older women had dragged her from one ball to the next,
constantly robing and disrobing her, bedecking her with necklaces,
scarves and hats.

Growing
up on a small estate in Yorkshire had been a tranquil experience.
Gigi’s parents had never entertained more than a dozen of close
friends.

In
London everything was strenuous and loud.

She
wanted to go home but her mother would not let her. A girl had to be
introduced into society properly, she had said. And that was that.

In
her youth, Gigi's mother had been quite an important member of the
ton
, but these days Mary Cartwright, formerly the Countess
Rivendon, hardly ever travelled to London and preferred to stay with
Eugenia's father, who was over sixty-five years of age and hated
polite society with a vengeance. “Puffed up old tarts!” he'd call
the ladies at Almack's.

The
debutantes were all decidedly boring and Gigi felt that she simply
did not fit in.

The
young men she had met were very charming but somehow refrained from
real conversation. They almost recoiled when she tried to converse
with them about their dogs or their horses or,
God forbid
,
literature, philosophy or politics!

Her
aunt, Lady Tarly, had warned her not to sound like a bluestocking –
a word of which Eugenia had never heard before. Lady Tarly had
advised her to speak only of thinks suitable for an unmarried girl,
such as balls, drawing, music and what?

Well,
nothing.

Yes,
Eugenia could sing, draw and dance, but she did not enjoy talking
about it. She wished to know more about the world, about science and
history, about far away places, about life!

Once
she had overheard her aunt complaining to Lady Cartwright that she
had let Eugenia get away with strange ideas. Nobody would marry a
girl like her. She was very pretty, certainly, but so were many other
debutantes who were less... well, less like Eugenia.

London
life was not for her, Gigi had decided.

Above
all she missed the company of her truest friend. Mr. Wimple. Nobody
could listen to her as patiently as he could. Nobody was as wonderful
a companion for picnics in the beautiful Yorkshire countryside.

Oh,
my Mr. Wimple. I miss you.

There
was not even anything remotely interesting in her aunt’s library
either.

She
did
enjoy the classics
but most of all she loved adventure novels.

Her
mother owned hundreds of them---but pretended not to.

Whenever
Gigi could, she nicked one of them and dwelled within the magical
world of suspense and love.

“
Why,
let's have a look at that little bookshop!” her mother cried out as
if she had heard her daughter's thoughts.

Lady
Tarly turned her eyes to the heavens but followed her sister-in-law
without complaining.

Gigi
felt her spirits rise. She quickly stepped into the shop and there
they were! Shelves full of books, shining and new! What new
adventures would they uncover?

Gigi's
mother began to converse with the shopkeeper who updated her on
recent philosophical publications and political works. In that
particular moment, Gigi did not care for intellectual books. She had
spotted just what she had been looking for in a shelf by a window.

The
Sultan
one
novel was titled.
Captured
another.
Abbey
of Shadows
a
third.

“
Well,”
she heard her mother say. “Having been to France myself at the
actual time, I
cannot
deny
that the aristocracy over there
did
have certain---”

The
door flew open.

A
tall figure in a dark blue overcoat and high hat of the exact same
colour, both of the finest cut, entered the shop, followed by another
tall gentleman of similar attire, though not quite as formidable as
the first.

“
Ah,
yerrs... dear little shop,” the figure drawled lazily. “Need gift
f’ m’ little sister, seventeen she'll be. What d’girls stick
‘noses into these days, huh?”