An Unlikely Duchess (17 page)

Would he be waiting for her? Would Papa have found some convincing way to explain her absence so that the man would still be expecting her to be his bride? Oh, surely not. Surely she had not gone all through this for nothing.

Josephine’s attention was suddenly diverted from her uncomfortable reveries. She was gazing sightlessly out of the window what suddenly her eyes focused and widened. And she shot out of the door even as Mrs. Hennessy turned to her with a pair of silk stockings draped over her arm.

“Stop, you villain!” she commanded, striding along the pavement in the wake of a tall and handsome gentleman.

He turned in some surprise and regarded her with raised eyebrows before turning frilly toward her and sweeping her an elegant bow.

“Miss Middleton,” Mr. Porterhouse said, smiling his most charming smile. “To what happy coincidence do I owe this welcome surprise?”

“Welcome nothing,” she said, setting her clenched fists on her hips. “Where are my jewels?”

He raised his eyebrows again and regarded her with polite interest. “Your jewels?” he asked.

“My jewels,” she repeated. “Where are my jewels, sir?”

“Really, ma’am,” he said, smiling apologetically down into her indignant face, “unless this is some riddle, I do not see how I can be expected to know the whereabouts of your valuables. Have you misplaced some?” He looked beyond her shoulder and inclined his head gravely. “Well met, indeed, Miss Middleton. Are you staying in the neighborhood?”

Josephine turned to find a smiling Mrs. Hennessy and a blushing Caroline behind her. What could she do but smile and make the introductions?

“But have you not heard, sir?” Mrs. Hennessy said when all the explanations and curtsying and bowing and simpering were over. Josephine closed her eyes briefly. “It must have happened since you last stayed with your relatives, the Winthrops. Dear Jo has married Mr. Villiers and is on her wedding journey.”

Mr. Porterhouse’s brows shot up and he reached for Josephine’s hand and raised it to his lips. “Wedding journey?” he said. “You are recently married then, Miss Midd—, I mean Mrs. Villiers?”

“Four days,” she said firmly, looking back defiantly too his eyes and seeing a flicker of amusement there.

“Four days,” he repeated, covering the hand he still held with his other hand. “Ah, the fortunate gentleman. This lady would have none of me, you know, Mrs. Hennessy, ma’am.”

Mrs. Hennessy tittered and Caroline blushed an even deeper shade.

“I shall look forward to meeting you again,” Mr. Porterhouse said, finally releasing Josephine’s hand and making his bows to all three ladies once more. “I am staying at Lord Parleigh’s, you know. I shall look forward to meeting my rival and seeing what he has that I do not.”

His eyes had the gall to twinkle at her, Josephine thought, watching helplessly as he turned to make his way unhurriedly along the street.

The only consolation in the whole frustrating situation—the only one—was that she could finally release the mental image of Mr. Villiers lying bleeding and dying somewhere on the Parleigh estate.

No, there was another consolation. She would have the satisfaction of informing Mr. Villiers—that amiable gentleman and male tyrant—that she had been the one to make the first communication with Mr. Porterhouse. Not that she had seriously discomposed him, it was true. But if Mrs. Hennessy and Caroline had not come out of the shop when they had, she would have given him a piece of her mind indeed. She would have had him quaking in his boots.

Oh, the handsome, slimy villain!

“What an extraordinarily amiable and charming young man,” Mrs. Hennessy was saying.

“Did you really refuse him, Jo?” Caroline was asking her. “How could you possibly? I would simply die if he were to ask me.”

***

Tom Burgess looked rather as if he had seen a ghost and been shot between the eyes with a pistol all at the same moment, the Duke of Mitford thought. And indeed, he was somewhat surprised to see Tom at Lord Parleigh’s when he had assumed two evenings before that he was on his way home to London.

Though Tom had said, when he came to think of it, that he had had trouble with his carriage.

The morning room at Deerview Park was not entirely filled with guests, the duke saw at a glance when the butler ushered him into the room. But it was not empty, either. There were Tom and a slim dark-haired lady, a fair-haired young man, and a golden-haired beauty. The genial looking and rather portly young man who got to his feet and came toward him, hand extended, must be Lord Parleigh himself.

“Ah,” he said, taking the duke’s hand in a firm and warm clasp, “pleased you could come. You must be... ?” The butler had made no public announcement of his identity.

“Mitford!” Sir Thomas Burgess cried, leaping to his feet and bounding across the room as if he had long thought his friend dead and was only now discovering his error. “By all that’s wonderful, what are you doing here?”

The duke frowned. Drat the man! So much for his plan to keep his real identity hidden. Had Tom forgotten so soon?

“Ah, yes, Mitford,” Lord Parleigh said, smiling broadly and frowning only very briefly. “Met you at the races, did I? So glad you saw fit to accept my invitation, old chap. Come for a week or two, have you? Splendid, splendid.”

The
Duke
of Mitford,” Sir Thomas said very pointedly, widening his eyes at the duke’s in a message that was totally indecipherable.

“Ah, the duke.” Lord Parleigh clapped him on the shoulder and turned back into the room. “Splendid, old fellow. Come and meet Lady Dorothy Brough, Miss Susanna Middleton, and her brother, Mr. Bartholomew Middleton.”

Lady Dorothy swept into a deep curtsy and favored Mitford with the type of speculative glance he was used to seeing in unmarried ladies of all ages. The golden beauty and her brother stood like pale statues, staring at him.

And Mitford feared that he gazed back at them in like manner. Oh, good Lord!

“Your grace,” the fair girl said eventually, dipping into an awkward curtsy.

The brother found his voice. “You are Mitford?” he asked foolishly. “You are not at Rutland Park?”

The duke inclined his head in a half-bow. And he slipped into his old self again almost as if it were along forgotten stage part.

“I was,” he said stiffly. “I, er, spoke with your grandfather. Your father and Miss Middleton were from home. I shall do myself the honor of calling again at some future date.”

The sister was regarding him with wide blue eyes and pale cheeks. “What did Grandpapa say?” she asked.

Mitford bowed again. “He mentioned something about, er, your aunt being unwell and your father and sister going to tend her,” he said.

He watched in some fascination as both brother and sister jumped into the comfortable lie he had presented them with and assured him quite vociferously that their aunt was indeed feared to be at death’s door. The sister’s eyes looked rather as if they were about to pop from their sockets.

“You have some acquaintance with one another, then?” Lord Parleigh said, rubbing his hands together with some satisfaction. “Splendid, splendid!”

Oh, good Lord, Mitford thought, taking the seat his host offered him and sealing into cozy and meaningless chatter with the occupants of the room. What a coil. All those present now knew him as the Duke of Mitford, whereas the occupants of the house four miles away knew him as Mr. Villiers; Miss Middleton’s brother and sister were in hot pursuit of her, apparently unaware that she was staying a mere few miles away, and doubtless not knowing that she was staying anywhere under the name of Mrs. Villiers; Tom was frowning and looking alternately between him and the Middletons, and seemed to be in imminent danger of letting his jaw hang; and Porterhouse was nowhere in sight.

And of course, the Middletons would know Porterhouse. Did they know of his part in absconding with their sister? Did they know about the jewels?

And was the father about to put in an appearance too, brandishing a hatchet in each fist?

Maybe the grandfather, too?

Lady Dorothy was sending out lures his way, using that trick ladies had with their eyelashes. He wondered idly if she would even have afforded a second glance at Mr. Paul Villiers.

“Jo is devoted to our aunt,” Miss Susanna Middleton said, her blue eyes fixed on his face, her pale cheeks flushing. “She is very tender-hearted.”

“And quite devoted to duty,” Bartholomew Middleton said. He had the grace to look rather as if his cravat were strangling him.

Mitford had a sudden, unbidden memory of Miss Josephine Middleton as she had felt in his arms the night before.

Oh, Lord.

“I will see you to the door,” Lord Parleigh said genially when Mitford rose to bring his visit to an end. It had already been established that the duke was staying at the Swan Inn and for reasons of his own preferred to remain there than remove to Deerview Park. Something to do with ducal eccentricity, it seemed. Or that was what Tom had said.

“I will walk with you to the stables,” Tom Burgess said, leaping to his feet once more.

“Porterhouse?” Lord Parleigh said when the three of them were standing on the steps outside the main doors. “Yes, indeed. He has been to visit an aunt, but he is supposed to be back later today. Handsome follow. All the ladies go wild over him, lucky devil. You know him, Mitford? A well-known fellow. The Middletons are of his acquaintance, too. You must call again. Come to my ball the evening after tomorrow. The ladies will be delighted to have a duke to fight over.” He laughed heartily.

Mitford made his bow. “I shall certainly call again,” he said. “I regret to say that I do not plan to stay for another two days, though, Parleigh.”

“Paul,” Sir Thomas almost hissed at him as they walked beyond earshot of their host. “Are you mad? I only just prevented the Middletons from knowing that you are the Villiers who has abducted their sister. Where is the little bride, by the way? And why are you not making in all haste for Gretna?”

“Simply because I am not going there at all,” the duke said. “Oh, Lord, what a coil. How did her brother and sister end up here, of all places?”

“I brought them,” Sir Thomas said, exasperated, “to keep them off your trail. Where is she, Paul?”

Mitford stroked his chin. “At Hawthorn House, four miles away,” he said. “With her friends, the Hennessys. Oh, Lord, what the devil am I doing? What I should have done was call the brother aside as soon as I knew who he was. I should have explained the whole thing to him.”

“Are you looking to have your nose broken and your eyes blackened and your ribs all poking out your backbone?” his friend asked incredulously. “You have been riding all over the country with the little lady by day and tumbling her by night, and you want to explain to her brother? My boy, it is time you stepped into the real world and learned how to look after your own skin.”

“Tumbling her.” The Duke of Mitford, who had stopped walking when they were still a discreet distance from the stables, passed a hand over the back of his neck and rocked back on his heels. “Oh, I say Tom, that is not what I have been doing, you know. I have been merely trying to help her recover her jewels. If I had not, she would have been mad enough to tear over the whole country doing it herself.”

“Her jewels.” Sir Thomas looked blank.

“Porterhouse has them,” the duke said.

“Porterhouse.” His friend frowned. “It was when they heard his name that Miss Middleton and her brother decided to stay here. Why is it that I have the feeling I am seeing the tip of an iceberg here?”

“Lord,” Mitford said. “Is my head still facing forward, Tom, or is it turned backward? I am no longer capable of telling. She is the most pestilential female it has ever been my misfortune to meet. I was supposed to be paying my addresses to her.”

Sir Thomas Burgess stared at him. “Past tense?” he said.

“Do you mean to say you think there is going to be any way of avoiding doing so in the future?”

“Lord,” Mitford said. “No.” He reached up a hand and scratched the curls at his temples. “I just don’t know where I am going to begin teaching her how to be a duchess though, Tom. She doesn’t have even the glimmering of an idea how to go on.”

Sir Thomas grinned suddenly. “Strangely,” he said, “considering the fact that I have not understood one thing that has happened in the last hour, I begin to see the faintest trace of a hope for you, Paul, my lad. And not before time, either. You are coming back here, you say?”

“Tomorrow,” the duke said. “I still have to confront Porterhouse-if he has not got wind of the reception committee awaiting him, that is, and taken to his heels.”

“I shall see you tomorrow, then,” his friend said. “But listen, Paul. There had better be a good explanation for all these goings-on, you know. I never would have suspected you could be such a mad dog. But there are likely to be sufferers. I don’t know the little lady herself, but her sister is beside herself with worry.”

“Oh Lord,” the Duke of Mitford said, “I don’t need you to lecture me, Tom. If I could see an honorable way out of this tangle, I would take it. But I cannot find it in me to abandon that brainless little chit. She would probably tackle Porterhouse alone and have herself ground to powder. Then what would happen to the sister? And what is your interest in the girl, anyway? I thought you cared for only one kind of female.”

“When they have golden hair and great big blue eyes and tender hearts,” Sir Thomas said, “I can force an interest, Mitford, believe me. Perhaps we will end up brothers-in-law yet, my lad.”

He wouldn’t worry about such a possibility, the Duke of Mitford thought as he hurried into the stable yard. It was becoming more and more of a probability that he would not emerge live and intact from the next few days. Porterhouse and the various male members of the Middleton family would doubtless end up having to put their names on a waiting list to get their fists at him.

And while he waited for them all to take their turn, he was going to have to spend another night at the Hennessys’. On the floor. With Josephine Middleton in the bed. Their fifth night together.

The very drought was enough to make him break into a cold sweat. Or perhaps not so cold, either.