Charming the Duke (17 page)

* * *

Thornsby fetched his cape from the back of the chair he was sitting in and slapped his hat on his head. He turned to Matilda, made a quick bow and left before she could rise from her seat. He dismissed his footman from where they waited beyond the gate. He preferred to walk. Matilda Sheldon, on the advice of her grandmother, no less, had decided to marry based on the aptitude of the man in the bedroom. Thornsby wondered how she would decide and laughed derisively as he envisioned her at the next ball asking gentlemen to drop their pants.

It was quite the most extraordinary thing he’d ever heard. Young woman in England, he guessed in most civilized countries, guarded their virtue with a vengeance. It was how things were done. It was how woman were to act. Thornsby stopped dead in his tracks as passersby rushed around him. Matilda Sheldon would set her mind to laying with an interminable number of men until she made up her mind. She would be cast aside as the worst of the worst. He could not allow it to happen.

Chapter Twelve

T
he Duke of Thornsby had barely slammed the door when Matilda’s mother and father arrived. Matilda supposed she had shocked the stuffy Duke. Unfortunately, it bore out her original opinion of him. How could she spend a lifetime with a man who could not countenance discussion? How provincial. How boring! Although she doubted Ethel and Henry talked a great deal. She was far too busy at this moment to consider the matter further. Her mother was setting books on shelves in the room she intended to use as the classroom, and her father and a footman were hauling stools and desks.

“Things are coming together quite well, Matilda,” Fran called from the stairs. “Your mother insisted we bring everything for her to commence her tutoring as soon as she heard some,” Fran stopped, looked around and whispered from the top step, “some orphans had already arrived.”

“No need to whisper, Father. They know they are orphans,” Matilda said.

“True enough, but hardly the thing to rub salt in a wound. Such an ugly word, Matilda,
orphan
. Makes me desperate just to say it,” Fran said.

“Mrs. Brewer, Matilda? Where are the children?” Frances called as she passed her husband on the stairway. “No time like the present to begin their studies.”

Davey and Bill came out of the kitchen under the arms of Mrs. Brewer. “Here they are, Your Ladyship. All ears and waiting to learn,” Mrs. Brewer said with a pointed look to both of the boys.

“Marvelous,” Frances said and clapped her hands together. “We will begin with Roman mythology straight away. Come along, boys. And no mischief. I tutored both of my sons years ago, and they tested me in every conceivable way. It paid off quite brilliantly. Fitz is at Oxford.”

“Mother,” Matilda said and drew her aside. “I don’t believe these boys can read even the most basic of texts.”

“What’s Oxford?” Bill asked.

“Why it’s a university, my lad,” Fran said.

“Then we will begin with the Greek, I suppose.” Frances shuddered. “I never cared for the Greeks, you know, though, Matilda. Quite a decadent lot, I’ve always believed.”

Matilda’s front door opened again. Ethel’s cane tapped in ahead, and Juliet and Alexandra followed.

“I hear Thornsby came calling, Matilda,” Ethel said.

“He was here when Grandmamma came to fetch us,” Juliet said to her mother’s astonished face.

“Out shopping with your grandmamma, I see,” Fran said, nodding to their parcels.

“We just had to get out of the house, Father,” Juliet said.

“I couldn’t find any ribbon I cared for,” Alexandra added near tears. “Then Grandmamma told me to buy black ones. She said it matched the color of the empty space between my ears.”

“Ethel,” Matilda warned.

“And with Mother telling us she needed to speak to us of a matter of most importance, then sitting us down and sending us off in a fit of laughter. It was all so confusing. You see we just had to go somewhere,” Juliet said to her father.

“Now, now, my dears. You have gone, and now you are back. Quite the thing,” Fran said as he laid a hand on Juliet and Alexandra’s shoulders.

“Come along, boys. We will begin with Methuselah,” Frances said as she turned to Bill and Davey. “She was a beautiful goddess with wild hair made completely of snakes.”

Alexandra was holding her hand straight out to the height of Davey’s waist. She drew it slowly to her gown.

“What are you doing, Alexandra?” Matilda asked.

Alexandra pointed to a small blue flower in the design of her dress. “His waist comes right to here. Help me remember which flower, Juliet.” She looked up at her sister with a smile. “That will be how long his pants must be cut.”

“But what of the width of his waist, Alexandra?” Juliet asked. “We must know that measurement as well.”

Alexandra tilted her head, stared at the boy as she drew her hand to her mouth in thought. Her eyes opened wide. “Now see what you have made me do, Juliet? Which flower was it?” she asked and stared down at the printed fabric of her dress.

“Didn’t the snakes bite her?” Davey asked.

“They would have, young man, if her hair hadn’t been cut off,” Fran Sheldon said.

“Why did her hair, the snakes, get cut off?” Bill asked.

“It was the source of her power,” Frances added. “She was left weak without her hair.”

“That was Samson, Mother,” Matilda said.

Frances laughed. “No, no Matilda. Delilah had very long hair. I saw a painting of her at the museum, dear. ”

* * *

Thornsby had made a decision some blocks into his walk that Matilda Sheldon needed a keeper. The thought of her, pure, clean and unsullied, lying with any man that would have her made him furious. He would put a stop to this notion immediately. He would threaten to tell her father if he must. Thornsby nearly ran the four blocks back to Matilda’s orphanage. Carriages lined the block. The front door drifted open, and he stood and listened to the conversation for quite awhile, undetected.

“I believe Medusa is the goddess you are referring to,” Thornsby said finally.

“I thought Medusa was a city in Spain,” Juliet said as she turned.

“Your Grace!” Frances Sheldon said. “How good to see you.”

“That’s Madrid,” Ethel said and shook her head. “I’ve got to sit down.”

No wonder the girl has such skewed notions, Thornsby thought. If her family was the source of her learning, then she was doomed from the start. She looked mortified at the moment.

“I need to speak to you, Miss Sheldon,” he said. “It is of the utmost importance.”

“I wonder if it is the same topic mother was going to speak to us about?” Alexandra asked. “She did say it was of the utmost importance.”

“Miss Sheldon?” Thornsby said as he indicated her office where they’d spoken earlier.

Matilda strode past the dropped jaws of her sisters and her mother’s smile of triumph. She turned as she heard the door close behind them. “I hardly know what to say after you’ve heard that conversation with my family.”

“Although that is not what I wanted to speak to you about, I can understand why you feel lonely on occasion. Listening to your family is, I imagine, what it is like in a foreign country where one knows nothing of the language.”

“It is the Queen’s English they speak,” Matilda said. “Just none of it connected to rational thought.”

“That is exactly what I wish to speak to you about,” Thornsby said. “Rational thought.” He stepped close to her and propped his arms on his hips.

“I hardly understood why you stormed out of here a short time ago. I had understood sensible conversation allowed for differences of opinion. Do you wish to explain yourself?”

“You call lying with half the men in London sensible?” Thornsby asked.

“Whatever are you talking about? Lying with men?” Matilda asked.

Thornsby loomed over her. “You know quite well ‘lying’ wasn’t exactly what you had in mind.”

Matilda shook her head. “I really haven’t any idea . . .”

“You said yourself, Miss Sheldon, that your mother and grandmother and my sister had convinced you to consider marriage.”

“Yes . . .”

“And that coupling was the consideration. Am I right?”

“Well, yes, I hadn’t considered that aspect of marriage . . .”

Thornsby could feel the veins pop out on his temples. He could smell chalk dust and apples in her hair. It was bizarrely titillating. “And that you meant to test these husband candidates. Am I right?”

“How else is one . . .”

“Some women manage to have some feeling, perhaps love when choosing a husband. You merely wish to rut with them to make your decision,” Thornsby hissed.

“Rutting? How crude! I never said a word about that being the test,” Matilda shouted back. “It must be your own wicked thoughts to think I’d ever consider such a thing.”

Thornsby’s shoulders dropped. Had he misconstrued their conversation so thoroughly? “What else was I to think? What other test would there be if the marriage bed is the only consideration for matrimony.”

“Coming from you of all people, engaged to Millicent Marsh.”

That comment stopped him dead in his tracks. She was right, damn it. Could he never win with this woman? “So you hadn’t decided to test men in that way. What were your plans then?”

“If you must know, Ethel said my stomach would go to mush.”

“Mush?” Thornsby said weakly.

“Just like it did when . . .” Matilda stopped abruptly.

“When what, Matilda?” Thornsby said in a low voice and stared into her eyes. “When what?”

“When you kiss her, you idiot,” Ethel said.

“Ethel!”

Thornsby turned in a flurry. “I had hoped this to be a private conversation.”

Ethel was laughing and leaning on her cane to stand. “It will be charming, no doubt, Matilda. You have met your match, I daresay.”

Ethel opened the door, and the rest of Matilda’s family fell away from the opening. Juliet straightened her hair. Alexandra stared, wide-eyed. Frances smiled weakly.

“What is the matter with you, Bisset? To allow your daughter, your unmarried daughter to be alone with me with the door closed,” Thornsby roared.

“Matilda can take good care of herself,” Juliet said. “She has told me that on numerous occasions.”

“I’m sure your intentions were honorable, Your Grace,” Frances said.

“And after all, my mother, the Dowager Countess was with you the whole time,” Fran supplied. “She is a notorious stickler for propriety.”

“That woman?” Thornsby asked Fran Sheldon. “She’s the very one to put foolish notions in Matilda’s head in the first place. No one knew she was in here anyway. Least of all me.”

“Quite fortunate, then, wouldn’t you say, Your Grace, that Mother Sheldon needed a rest,” Frances said.

“Her knees bother her on occasion,” Fran added.

“Most likely the change in weather,” Frances said.

“There is nothing foolish about the issues Matilda and I discussed,” Ethel said. “Needs said to every young miss in the land long before she finds herself at the altar. I suggested my daughter-in-law have the same conversation with Juliet and Alexandra.”

“Oh. Do tell. I imagine what you’re discussing is what mother wished to talk to us about this morning.” Juliet looked up at the Duke. “She laughed most hysterically then and ran from the room.”

Thornsby was in awe. Of her family. Her reluctant admission that his kiss had affected her and the thrill he felt with that admission. Matilda was staring at the ceiling. He walked past her family to stand in front of her.

“I am very sorry I misunderstood you this morning. Pray forgive me and allow me to escort you to the Benford Ball.” Thornsby looked around the room to assess whose company he could countenance for an evening. “If the Dowager would be so kind as to chaperone you.”

“You wish me to accompany you to a ball? You must be mad!” Matilda said. “You have done nothing but insult me since the day you mistook me for the maid. And today. Today you accuse me of . . . well, that is the worst of it.”

“I have one word to say to you, Miss Sheldon.” Thornsby slapped his leather riding gloves in his palm and stared into her eyes. “Mush.”

“The Benford Ball, you say,” she repeated. He nodded. “What time shall I be ready?”

Long sighs and hand wringing from her family followed. They, Thornsby supposed, waited as impatiently as he for Matilda’s answer. He stood straighter, although he was not quite sure whether because Matilda had accepted or he had by chance won one round of this match.

“Eight o’clock.” Thornsby said and made his goodbyes to her family.

* * *

“The Benford Ball!” Frances exclaimed as the door closed.

“It is the most coveted invitation of the season!” Juliet supplied.

“What will you wear?” Alexandra asked.

“Gentlemen only escort their affianced to balls such as this, Matilda,” Frances said. “You do realize what this means?”

“It means I will have to squeeze my feet into tight shoes and allow Mimi to stab my skull with pins. Nothing else,” Matilda said.

Ethel marched to her. “Concede defeat, Matilda. A gentleman accompanies a lady only when marriage is just around the corner. You are fooling yourself if you do not realize Thornsby’s intent.”

“And what of my intent?” Matilda said.

“What of it? It is the same as his if you allow yourself to consider it,” Ethel said. She turned to her other granddaughters. “Come along and escort me home, girls. We’ll need to think about what your sister will wear to the ball.”

Matilda allowed herself to consider all that had happened for the next hour. Consider in fact, her intent. She hustled Ethel, Alexandra and Juliet out the door and her mother, Bill and Davey, up the staircase. Fran Sheldon decided a congratulatory drink at his gentleman’s club was in order. After all, his daughter was marrying a duke. And Matilda found herself curled in the rocker in front of the fireplace. Mrs. Brewer brought tea and cookies without a word spoken and then proceeded to make herself scarce.