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Authors: The Duke Next Door

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BOOK: Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 02]
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Once Deirdre had eaten and dressed, she found herself at loose ends. There was nothing to do in Brook House. The household already ran smoothly. Other than seeking out the lost kitten, she had no plans for the day, or any day soon, so there would be no choosing of gowns or dressing of hair later.
She steadfastly refused the compulsion to look for a partner in crime in Meggie, for the act smacked a bit too much of obeying his lordship’s edict that she raise his daughter. Besides, her ladyship had every right to inspect her new domain, after all. She would work her way from the cellar to the attic, she decided.
Unfortunately, the cellar was extremely dull, consisting of a rigidly organized storage area for root vegetables and the even more immaculate kitchens, where she didn’t dare step foot.
The public rooms of the house, the parlors and drawing rooms and music room, she knew well already. His lordship’s study remained a mystery, but Deirdre was not about to brave the Beast’s very den—especially when she remembered the way he’d gazed at her last night!
She would have to face him sometime if she wished to wage her battle, but perhaps not just yet.
In the end, she found herself wandering the gallery, peering beneath the skirted tables and whispering allegedly cat-attracting noises. The hallway ran the front of the house, with inset windows looking out over the very best of London’s houses perched along the street below.
Pausing in one of the window embrasures, Deirdre gazed out at the city she’d expected to own outright by now. Here she was, the Marchioness of Brookhaven, gripping the bars of her cage and staring out like the most forsaken Bedlamite.
Activity on the street below caught her attention. Three men approached the door to Brook House. They moved with the lithe bodies and easy steps of youth. After a moment, she recognized a certain gaudily striped waistcoat.
Ah, her worshipful faction had arrived. The waistcoat would be Cotter, the gray jacket would be Saunders and the dark blue … that would be Baskin.
The fact that she’d been wed only the day before seemed not to give any of the three pause—and why would it? It had been obvious to the world that hers had been a marriage of convenience. Why would life not go on as usual, with gentlemen callers abounding?
They were only a bunch of bored boys, anyway, with no real prospects of inheriting anything worthwhile and no real mission in life to occupy them. Flirting was their favorite pastime and, really, their only skill. Why should a little wedding ceremony slow them down a bit?
Cotter and Saunders enjoyed her company well enough, but she would guess that it was Baskin who couldn’t stay away.
Baskin was the failed son of a renowned poet. Deirdre
spared a moment of sympathy for what it must have been like to grow up in the shadow of great expectations—among the artistic elite of Hampstead yet—but that pity evaporated like dew in the morning as she recalled the long hours of tedious verse he had subjected her to in the past.
Heaven help her, she almost wished Fortescue would let them in. Even Baskin’s dreadfully overwrought penning of passionate devotion would be a relief from the tension and boredom she feared would constitute the rest of her life.
Or perhaps not. Baskin would insist on reading them aloud to her, until her eyes glazed over and her arse went numb. It was with mixed regret and relief that she watched them amble away, dejection in every step.
She turned from the view. Right. It wasn’t as if she’d truly wanted to see any of them. After all, those days of attentive flirtation and sparkling conversation were over.
The opposite wall of the gallery hosted great lifesized paintings of every member of the Marbrook family—apparently reaching back into the days when men thought they had the panache to carry off the wearing of slashed doublets and tights.
Marbrook men did tend toward the satisfyingly muscular thigh, didn’t they?
Were his lordship’s thighs so well-strapped? He was tall and long of leg, and his trousers were well-fitted—though not so tightly as that fop Cotter’s—so she knew that his buttocks were hard and his stomach flat, and it looked as though he might well have all the requisite family history for truly handsome thighs as well … .
She came to the most modern paintings to see two young men at the last. Lord Raphael and Lord Calder Marbrook, the engraved plates said.
Calder had not had his portrait painted since then, but he had apparently commissioned one of Melinda. She sat regally posed in an elegant chair, wearing a lace gown that was so stylishly advanced that Deirdre would not be ashamed to wear it tomorrow. Of course, but the young, beautiful Marchioness of Brookhaven had sparked the fashions, not followed them, hadn’t she?
Deirdre knew she herself was beautiful in a bold, golden fashion, but Melinda had been something altogether rare and lovely. So slender as to approach frailty—except that on her it merely seemed exquisite and otherworldly—Melinda’s dark hair and mist-pale complexion gave her an air of another time.
Her wide, heavily lashed eyes had been painted nearly violet in color—which was quite ridiculous and probably some artist’s conceit, for who had purple eyes?—except that it looked entirely right, somehow.
Deirdre narrowed her eyes, not liking the feeling rising within her. Small of bosom, long of limb, achingly lovely—well, his lordship’s first wife was enough to give Venus herself a nick in her pride!
“She’s prettier than you.”
Deirdre let out a breath but didn’t turn around. “Lady Margaret, we really must address your tendency to state the obvious.”
Meggie came even with Deirdre and gazed expressionlessly up at her mother’s face. “She’s prettier than me, too.”
Deirdre glanced down at the child with a noise of impatience. “Soap and water does wonders.” Then
something inside her relented. “For now, perhaps—but you resemble her more than you know.”
“There’s no portrait of me.”
There wasn’t. It was as if the great line of Marbrook ended with Brookhaven’s marriage to Melinda—as if she had wiped out the entire future of the family. Deirdre shivered, but pasted on a smile for the child. “Well, you’re not done baking yet, are you? Likely when you’re older—”
“It’s because he doesn’t want to look at me.” Meggie turned stony eyes to meet Deirdre’s gaze. “If he cannot look at me when I’m here, why would he want to see me when I’m gone?”
Deirdre didn’t bother denying it. She hadn’t been here long enough to know if it was true or not—and she wasn’t in the mood to defend Brookhaven either way. “I’m in the mood for tea,” she said. Turning, she walked a few steps before turning back. “You might as well come, too.”
Meggie lifted her chin and gazed resolutely at her mother’s otherworldly eyes. “I might … or I might not.”
Deirdre nearly walked on, but after casting one more look back at the tiny, scruffy figure standing tense and alone in the great gallery, she let out a breath. “I believe I once saved some society articles about your mother … if you want to see them.”
A quarter of an hour later, they sat side by side in the family parlor, poring over the yellowed clippings from years ago.
In her teenaged fervor, Deirdre had religiously sifted through it all to find everything she could about the young lord and his doomed lady.
There were sketches of her as well, for it seemed that
no artist could resist the opportunity to draw Melinda. Even the most meager talent rose to new heights with such a model, so there had been a great number of those to choose from.
Meggie absorbed it all, laboriously reading every word about the most talked-about young couple of the
ton,
from the first clipping announcing their engagement to the wedding, and all the Society appearances. Her grubby fingers could not seem to help but trace over every line delineating her mother’s face.
Melinda didn’t deserve such devotion, but Deirdre was careful not to let such bitter judgment sully the moment for the child.
After all, Meggie wasn’t so bad when one got to know her. In fact, she reminded Deirdre of herself. She knew just how much a young girl could long to have someone who truly had her best interests at heart.
She reached to take the book before the next page revealed the scandal sheets. “That’s all there is. I’m afraid I left London for Woolton about then.”
Meggie’s fingers twitched toward the book, but surprisingly she made no protest. Deirdre reminded herself that little Lady Margaret had taught herself not to ask questions she didn’t want to know the answers to.
At any rate, there was no time for argument, for Fortescue announced a visitor.
“Lord Graham Cavendish, my lady.”
Before the butler had finished the words, a pair of strong arms swept Deirdre up in a hug.
“Oof! Graham, put me down or I’ll have you flogged! I have minions and lackeys now and don’t you forget it!”
She was plunked back onto her feet but received an unrepentant buss on her cheek. Her cousin—actually, Tessa’s cousin, but since Deirdre had grown up with him he felt much like a cousin, or even a rather useless but amusing brother—Lord Graham Cavendish, held her at arm’s length and grinned widely.
“Pretty Dee. Lovely Dee.
Rich
Dee. Can I borrow a few quid? How about a hundred?” He heaved a happy sigh. “When do you think I can tap the big fellow for a loan? Is today too soon? It might be good to catch him early, don’t you think, wedding night and all?” He winked. “He’s sure to be in a good mood right now.”
“Ahem.” Deirdre elbowed the wretch in his hard middle and indicated the presence of little Lady Margaret with a tilt of her head.
Graham turned and spotted the child. “Hullo, darling,”
he said with a delighted grin. “Who’re you and how do I get in line to marry you someday?”
As simply as that, Graham had another slave for life. Ferocious, bristly, little Meggie melted in a pool of feminine goo and adoration. Graham, the rotter, soaked it up.
He was nothing but the youngest son of four of the Duke of Edencourt. Without the merest chance of inheritance, unfortunately, for his three brothers were all hearty and healthy and in their prime. Without prospects or ambition to propel him to use his excellent mind and talents, Graham tended toward lazy and irresponsible.
It was too bad, really, for he was handsome enough to cut quite the figure through Society—if one preferred gentlemen of a lean ilk.
“I’m so glad you could make it to my wedding,” Deirdre said dryly. “It meant so much to have all my family there.”
Graham shrugged, his smile slightly guilty. “I heard you’d wound the great Brookhaven about your little finger. I figured that posh crowd would do you well enough.”
“Still avoiding Tessa, then?”
Graham shuddered. “Avoiding everyone, actually. I’ve been hiding out in a certain lady’s house for weeks, but her hus—” He glanced aside at Meggie. “Her family arrived this morning and there simply wasn’t room for me any longer.”
“Why there? Did you burn your house down again?”
“I never burned it
down.
It was only a small kitchen fire. The cook was out and I wanted bangers and mash.”
“The cook quit because you wouldn’t eat anything but bangers and mash. And the fire wasn’t in the kitchen, it was in the study.”
He spread his hands. “Where I was trying to make bangers and mash!”
“So why can’t you stay there? It’s nearly as big as this one.”
For the first time something darker flashed across the unsullied green of his eyes. “Father is once again in residence … along with the chest-beaters.”
Deirdre couldn’t hide a grimace. Graham’s brothers were three of the largest, hairiest, crudest men of the aristocracy, surpassed only by his father, the Duke of Edencourt himself. “All four of them at once?”
“Oh, God.” Graham passed one hand over his face. “Save me, Dee.”
“Did they bring home more hunting trophies?”
He sighed, still hiding his eyes. “Death hangs on every wall. Glass eyes follow one everywhere.”
Fortescue brought more tea and cakes. Deirdre settled back with her feet curled beneath her on the sofa and her cup in her hand, willing to let Graham entertain her doldrums away. He soon had Meggie talking excitedly about her life at Brookhaven and regaled her in return with tales of boyish derring-do performed at his father’s estate of Edencourt. Graham was a useless sponge, but he had a way of making things brighter.
Fortescue entered the parlor and bowed to Deirdre. “Good afternoon, my lady.” Then he turned to where Meggie sat in the window seat. “Good afternoon, Lady Margaret.”
Meggie turned her face upward in surprise. “What’s so good about it?” she asked with genuine curiosity.
Graham made a choked noise.
Fortescue cleared his throat. “My lady, it seems that something of yours has gone astray. One of the
chambermaids took quite a fright when she found it in the linen closet.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out something Deirdre had given up on ever seeing again.
The kitten, it turned out, was of the black-and-white variety. His glossy little face was entirely dark but for the edges of his jaws where his white throat began, which spread down his little chest, making him look for all the world like a collared and ascot-clad dandy. His two front paws were also white, like tiny furry gloves. He sat on Fortescue’s palm, blinking widely.
Meggie went very still. “It’s mine?”
“Perhaps,” Fortescue replied, “there is some other young lady in this house who lacks a kitten?”
Apparently, Meggie found this point irrefutable and reached out to take the kitten. Cuddling it high up under her neck, she gazed at Fortescue with worried brown eyes. “Does Papa know?”
Deirdre set down her cup, ready to jump to the defense of the kitten, but Fortescue only straightened. “I’m sure that such a very small sort of animal is beneath his lordship’s notice … for the moment.”
Meggie ignored the warning and smiled sunnily at the butler. “Fortescue,” Meggie announced, “I am going to name him after you. After all, you’re dressed just alike.”
She held the kitten about its plump little body, legs and tail dangling. Deirdre had to bite her lip, for the kitten’s black-and-white markings did look remarkably like the butler’s elegant, begloved livery. “Fortescue, meet Fortescue.”
Fortescue didn’t laugh and, admirably, barely flinched. “I am honored, my lady,” he said gravely, “but while
this is not an issue for me, might it not cause some confusion among the staff?”
Meggie blinked and turned the kitten in her hands to consider it with a frown. “But that is the only name I can think of.”
Fortescue nodded. “Naming is an important matter. Perhaps the ability to wear evening clothes with such panache does give hint of an underlying dignity—” The kitten crossed its eyes and batted little white paws at nothing at all. Fortescue tilted his head. “—that will someday emerge. A gentleman feline of such distinction deserves a very special name indeed.”
Meggie gave a decisive little nod. “You’re right, Fortescue. This isn’t something I ought to rush into.” She poured a saucer of cream from the tea tray and deposited her rakish gentleman-to-be on the table to enjoy it.
“Indeed, my lady.” Fortescue turned away with a bow. He caught Deirdre’s amazed gaze. “Yes, Lady Brookhaven?”
Deirdre clasped her hands on her knees and tilted her head. “Fortescue, is there a finer manservant in all of England?”
“Not that I know of, my lady, but then I am not a well-traveled man.” He bowed, but not before Deirdre saw a flash of amused respect cross his expression.
No. Impossible. Fortescue would never mistake her for someone to respect, not now that Brookhaven had diminished her status to that of a disobedient child. Then again, Fortescue seemed to have a great deal of respect for Meggie.
“Fortescue, you did not inform me that we had company.” Lord Brookhaven had arrived on the scene.
BOOK: Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 02]
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