An Unlikely Duchess (12 page)

They were brave words. But what did one do when the man one was pursuing seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth together with the carriage he was traveling in?

“We will have to go back to the inn where he was last seen,” the duke said. “There is no point in going any farther north. By the time we get back there, it will be nightfall and we will have to spend the night.” He spoke with sudden decision. “And tomorrow, Miss Middleton, I am going to start on the way back home with you. I should never have brought you this far. It was sheer madness. I’ll take you back to your father.”

“Oh, no, you will not!” she said vehemently. “I am not going back without my jewels, sir. And if you will not search farther with me, then I will search alone. I don’t need you.”

“Yes, you do,” he said. “I hold the purse strings, remember?”

“Oh!” she said. “How horrid of you to remind me of that. As if I did not know it. And I have already told you that I will repay every farthing that you have spent on my behalf. You need not fear being out of pocket, sir.”

“I do not fear it,” he said. “I am more afraid of swinging from a noose for kidnapping.”

“Oh, rubbish and nonsense,” she said. “Do you think I have no tongue in my head to speak up for you? We must continue with the search for my jewels. Not that they are of very great value, you understand, Grandpapa being very insistent that all the really valuable family jewels be kept under lock and key— his key. But it is the principle of the thing. I cannot bear to think of that horrid man handling Mama’s garnets and gloating over Grandmama’s ring and turning up his nose in disgust at the smallness of the emeralds in Bart’s earbobs.”

“I will find Porterhouse and your jewels eventually,” he said. “But we cannot pluck him out of thin air, Miss Middleton. And the longer you and I travel about together and keep up this charade of being man and wife, the more your reputation will suffer. I shall take you back home. And it seems to me that that is a good place to star my search again. Perhaps he was staying with there will have some idea of where he may be found.”

“The Winthrops?” she said. “But I don’t want to go home. You won’t force me to go, will you?”

“Yes. I will,” he said.

“Oh,” she said accusingly, “and I thought you were nice.”

She sat beside him with slumped shoulders and lowered head for all of three miles as they headed south again. And why was he feeling so very guilty about finally deciding to do what was right and proper? He felt like putting one arm about her and cradling her head against his shoulder—where it had rested last night, now that he came to think about last night—and murmuring soothing words into her ear.

Was he mad? He never put his arms about young ladies or murmured into their ears. Either in public or in private. It was a most improper thing to do. And was he thinking of doing both now perched on the high seat of a curricle on the open highway for all the world to see? It did not bear thinking of. The Duke of Mitford kept his hands on the ribbons and his eyes on the road ahead of him .

He had miscalculated. Darkness—and a very thick and heavy darkness—was already falling when they reached the first inn where there had been no news of Portherhouse. They were forced to put up for the night there.

Josephine ate her dinner in stony and unhappy silence, and Mitford kept glancing at her, uneasy and guilt-ridden. Though whether he felt more guilty over having begun this charade in the first place or over finally trying to end it before she was completely ruined, he would have been hard put to it to say.

He felt like a monster and a tyrant.

But good Lord. Good Lord! He could scarce believe in the reality of the past two days. He would not have believed himself capable of such behavior. He had rescued a maiden in distress, and ten minutes or less later he had had the chance to turn her over, unharmed, to her father. 

And what had he done instead? Well, he did not care to think of what he had done.

And he had wanted adventure in his life before settling to a dull and proper marriage. Oh, Lord.

He would have to marry this mad little creature, who preferred to be with a strange male than with the respectable Hennessys. He looked gloomily across the table at her unhappy face. And shook off the memory of her head on his shoulder the night before and the thin shift that had been all that separated his hand from her warm woman’s body. And the thought of her clinging trustingly to his sleeve through most of the day.

She would suffer the effects of her indiscretion. It had all started when she had run from the unwanted marriage. Poor Miss Middleton. He could almost feel sorry for her. The moment she had begged him not to go out to her father was the moment she had sealed her own doom. For now she was bound to marry the duke she had fled.

A fine marriage they were going to have, indeed! He doubted he would ever be able to train her to fit into the life he had been raised to from childhood. A more unlikely candidate for a duchess—and his duchess—he had never in his life met.

She yawned suddenly across the table from him and made no attempt, as a genteel young lady would do, to disguise the fact. Her eyes were on her fork, which was pushing a piece of potato aimlessly around. Mitford found himself smiling despite himself. Good Lord, had not Grandpapa said she was twenty years old? She seemed like a very child, one quite innocent of the ways of the world. Except that she did not feel at all like a child.

“Come,” he said, “I shall take you up to our room. You are tired.”

She did not argue but waited for him to come around the table and pull out her chair, and rose listlessly to her feet. She moved ahead of him to the doorway, one of his hands at the small of her back.

And of course, Mitford thought, a trying day must have the perfect ending. And if it had happened the night before, why not this night too? He was hardly even surprised.

There was a young and fashionable gentleman sitting in the shadow at a table close to the door. A gentleman who looked in amusement and appreciation at Miss Middleton and in greater amusement at him. A gentleman who raised his wine glass in a mock toast and winked at the Duke of Mitford as he passed.

A gentleman who just happened to be Sir Thomas Burgess, one of his closest friends.

Mitford walked past without acknowledging either the toast or the wink or the familiarity of the gentleman who offered both. He led Josephine up the stairs in silence, opened the door into their room, and stepped inside with her.

“You are very tired,” he said. “It has been a long and a distressing day for you. Go to sleep now, and everything will appear a little better in the morning.”

“No, it will not,” she said, looking down at her hands. “Everyone is quite right about me. Everyone says I am an utter scatterbrain. I would not talk to Papa, though I know he would have listened to me. And I trusted Mr. Porterhouse when I should not have. And I brought my jewels with me instead of leaving them at home where they were safe. And I interfered with your journey and dragged you north with me when you were too kind to say no. And it has all been in vain. We have not found either Mr. Porterhouse or my jewels.”

“But I will find both,” he said. “I promise you that I will sooner or later.”

She raised miserable eyes to his. “Why should you?” she said. “What concern are my problems of yours?”

It was a good question, the duke thought. He smiled down at her and set one hand on her shoulder, patting it reassuringly. “I don’t like to waste two days either,” he said. “Go to bed now. You need sleep more than anything. I shall go downstairs again for a while.”

“Mr. Villiers?” she said, as he tamed away to the door. He turned back and looked inquiringly at her.

“I am sorry I was cross with you,” she said. “I had no right. You have been very kind to me.”

He smiled in some amusement. He wished he had kept count of the number of times she had said that since he had met her.

Sir Thomas Burgess was still sitting in the dining room. He was just cutting into a plateful of roast beef and vegetables. The Duke of Mitford took the seat opposite him.

“Your summer in Scotland has extended well into the autumn, Tom,” he said. “Are you finally on the way home?”

His friend finished cutting into his beef and put a forkful into his mouth. He ate it unhurriedly, regarding the duke the while with the same amusement as had been on his face earlier.

“And it would seem that it is about time,” he said at last. “The world must be coming to an end if my eyes did not deceive me ten minutes ago. Paul, you old dog, you. I never thought to see you squiring around a little ladybird on the king’s highway.”

The duke sat back in his chair and blew out his breath from puffed cheeks. “She isn’t a ladybird,” he said.

“Ah.” Sir Thomas laughed. “Sorry, old boy. This dim light was deceiving my eyes. Your octogenarian aunt, was she, Paul?”

“No,” the duke said. “She is not my aunt either, Tom. I suppose I could not persuade you to forget that you have seen me here, could I?”

His friend held up his right hand. “My lips are sealed,” he said. “Am I keeping you from the lady’s arms, Mitford? And does she treat you well when you are in them? I am mortally jealous. Nights spent alone at inns are deuced long and tedious, are they not?”

“Look, Tom.” Mitford shifted uncomfortably on his chair. “It’s not what you think. She’s a lady.”

Sir Thomas seemed to forget about his food. He leaned back in his chair and grinned. “Mitford, you old dog,” he said, “I knew you had it in you. I knew you would have to break loose one of these days. But a lady? Are you serious?”

“Yes, I’m serious,” the duke said. “And I would prefer it if you weren’t so loud and free with the ‘Mitfords’, Burgess. Could you make that Villiers?”

His friend stared at him, and a slow grin spread across his face again. “I’m a bit of a slowtop, aren’t I?” he said. “But I get there eventually, Mit—ah, Villiers. You are traveling on the north road incognito with a young thing whom you claim to be a lady. You are heading north, I suppose?”

The duke nodded.

“Gretna, by any chance?” his friend asked.

“Oh, good Lord,” Mitford said.

“Ha!” Sir Thomas cut into his food again. “Guessed it, have I, my boy? Though I can’t imagine why you would have to elope with any young lady when any number of them have been trying for years to trap you and I know at least a dozen baronets and earls and such who would kill to acquire you for a son-in-law. She must be promised to someone else, is she?”

“Oh, Lord,” the duke said. “You always were hopeless at charades and guessing games, Tom. Look, just forget you have seen me, will you? I’ll see you in London when I get back there. You shall tell me all about Scotland.”

“And you shall tell me all about the one part of it I missed,” Sir Thomas said, raising his wine glass and winking at his friend again. “Gretna Green. I can tell you this, Mit—Villiers, no one will ever call you a dull dog again after this escapade. You will be the
on-dit
for a year or more. Go and enjoy the little lady, then. I admire your choice, by the way. She is quite exquisitely pretty.”

The duke rose to his feet. “Good night, Tom,” he said. “I would rather my...um, I would rather Miss...I would rather she did not know there is someone here I am acquainted with. She may find it rather distressing.”

His friend winked once more. “If we meet at breakfast,” he said, “I shall look straight through you, Paul. Never saw you in my life. I suppose you are registered here as Mr. and Mrs. Villiers?”

“Yes,” the duke said, flushing.

“Mitford,” Sir Thomas said, lifting his wine glass to his lips, “welcome to the human race. Go. Don’t worry about leaving me to enjoy a solitary meal. And don’t worry about the fact that I broke an axle of my carriage this afternoon and am doubtless stranded at this godforsaken inn for the next fortnight. Do not worry about me at all. Mrs. Villiers awaits you.”

The Duke of Mitford scratched his head and left.

But as he passed the taproom, the landlord called to him and asked if he was still interested in a blue and yellow carriage.

“Yes, indeed,” the duke said, stepping inside and up to the counter. “That gent”—the landlord nodded in the direction of a burly farmer who was in the process of tipping back a large tankard of ale—“says that a dark gentleman in a carriage of that description lost a wheel earlier today when he collided with a herd of cows being led across the road. Came near to killing one of the cows, he did, too.”

Mitford looked to the farmer in question. “And which direction was he headed in?” he asked the landlord.

The man pointed off in an easterly direction. “Probably on his way to the baron’s,” he said. “That’s where all the other nobs have been going today, if you will pardon me, sir.”

“The baron’s?” The duke raised his eyebrows.

“Lord Parleigh that would be, sir,” the landlord said. “Deerview Park is seven miles away. Always having guests, he is, sir.”

“Thank you.” The duke set a coin in the landlord’s hand.

***

Josephine laid the borrowed dress carefully over the back of a chair. It would do for the next day too. It would have to do. She washed herself carefully and brushed out her hair. She knew she did not have to hurry. Mr. Villiers would not return soon.

And she was going to have to do some deep and fast thinking. Mr. Villiers was going to take her home the next day. And she had known earlier that afternoon, looking at his profile as he drove his curricle, that he had meant what he said and would not be shifted easily.

Men! They were all the same. Stuffy and immutable when it came to doing what they thought was right for a lady’s wellbeing. They never thought to consult the lady in question and consider her wishes. Oh no, they simply decided and that was that. Just as if women were children or featherbrains.

Mr. Villiers was as bad as any of them. Even though he was no great hulking gentleman who would intimidate females by his size, and even though he was mild mannered and amiable and had that good-humored mouth and those soft, unruly curls, nevertheless he was a gentleman through and through. And that meant that he was an oppressor of ladies.