Leslie Lafoy (3 page)

He was right, of course. Damn him. But there was something so terribly humiliating, so patently desperate about throwing away all the efforts as if they’d been mere diversions while she waited to become a fairy-tale princess.

“Perhaps,” he went on, “it might help to think of acceding as the fulfillment of your late mother’s greatest hopes.”

She sucked in a deep breath, furious that he’d stoop so low, weakened by the realization that her mother would have had her out the door and into his carriage before
he’d even gotten out of it. “And how is it that you know anything of her aspirations?” she asked, stalling as she tried to weigh her pride against her mother’s dreams.

“As I said, I am thorough. I came here to take you away by any means necessary. I prefer, of course, to accomplish the task through reason and an appeal to your intelligence and sensibilities. To that end, I made a point of learning all that I could about you and the history of your parents’ relationship.”

“Such as it was,” she felt compelled to add testily.

“True.” He dredged up a smile that actually seemed slightly apologetic. “Unfortunately, ‘brief’ and ‘irresponsible’ seem to be the words to characterize all of your late father’s more . . . intimate relations outside his marriage.”

“He had others?” she asked, stunned less by the fact that her mother hadn’t been the man’s only victim than the fact that she’d never considered the possibility.

He nodded. “Three that produced offspring. There may well have been more, but the other ladies involved did not make claims of paternity and ask for maintenance.”

“Three,” she said softly as Lord Thorough continued his monologue. “I have two siblings.”

“Two sisters,” he clarified, looking at her as though she’d suddenly become another kind of bug entirely. “Collecting them is next on my rather pressing list of tasks to be completed today. So if you could be so reasonable as to abandon your pride and understandable resentment of the past so that we may get on with it all, I would be most appreciative.”

Part of her brain recognized that his request was a slightly milder, quieter version of a finger snap. Another part of her brain was whirling with childhood memories.
Yet another was cringing at unacceptable possibilities. “Are my sisters older or younger?”

“Younger,” he supplied crisply. “Miss Simone is reportedly fourteen and Miss Fiona only eleven.”

Oh, dear God. Babies. They were nothing more than babies. “And do you intend to see them established and married off as well?”

“When the time is appropriate.”

Perhaps she was being needlessly concerned for their welfare. It could well be that their families wouldn’t relinquish them. Or at the very least have the resources necessary to check the new duke’s influence and control. “What are their present circumstances?” she asked.

“Let it suffice to say that I do not anticipate any difficulties in acquiring them.”

Acquire. As he undoubtedly acquired a new suit. Or a title. Or a mistress. God, fourteen. She remembered being that age. It had been horrible. Part woman, part child. Not sure which would surface in any given situation. Hideously, acutely aware of how her body was changing. Minute by minute, it seemed. And how her new body had changed the way men looked at her and how that had changed, overnight, all the rules for dealing with people.

And eleven . . . She remembered that time, too. It had been awful in a different sort of way. Life had stopped being simple then. She’d realized there were ugly things in the world at eleven. Not that she’d understood exactly what they were then, but she’d sensed the shadows keenly enough that the distraction of old childhood games had started to feel like a dangerous thing. It was when you weren’t paying attention that the monsters under the bed would grab your ankles and drag you off to hell.

She wouldn’t go back and relive those years for all the money in Christendom, all the tea in China. She’d gotten through them and past them, but only because her mother had been such a strong and steady presence at her back. If she hadn’t been there . . . If she’d been handed into the care of a stranger who issued decrees and saw to her care only because he
had
to . . . Caroline swallowed away the tickle of tears in her throat and surrendered to the whisper of her conscience.

“And where,” she asked, “is it that the three of us will be . . . ” She faltered, overwhelmed by a sense of hopelessness and the weight of unexpected responsibility.

“Ensconced? Housed?” he suggested.

“I was thinking more along the lines of imprisoned,” she admitted.

He ignored her lack of enthusiasm. “The current Season is over and everyone has retired to their country estates. Your father had one, of course, and it was among several properties that passed into my possession at his death. It is my plan that we all take up residence there and spend the coming fall doing whatever is required for young women to be considered socially acceptable.”

It didn’t bode well that he didn’t appear to have any better idea of the specific tasks that lay ahead than she did. But the die had been cast and there was nothing to do but make the best of things. “I’ll accompany you, willingly, on three conditions.”

His brow shot up. Warily, he asked, “And they would be?”

Believing that the strength of conviction accomplished far more than mealy pleading and hopeful suggestions, she said firmly, “The first is that you will place my account
ledgers into the hands of an able manager to be settled fairly. I won’t have those who have supported my mother and myself over the years treated shabbily.”

“Consider it done. The second condition?”

“My assistant will see that the orders due in the next week are completed and delivered as promised. After that, she’ll join us in the country.”

“Why?”

“Don’t ladies have personal maids?”

“Yes. Does she have experience at that sort of thing?”

“No, but then, I have no experience at being a lady, so it’s not as though I’d notice any shortcomings on her part. Either you agree to bring Jane to the country, or I won’t go.”

“What is one more female in a house full of them? Your third condition?”

“If it becomes apparent that I don’t have the temperament or the ability to become a socially acceptable woman, you won’t persist in humiliating me. You’ll allow me access to the money my father set aside for bribing a would-be husband so that I can reestablish an independent life for myself.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Doing what?”

“The difference between being a modiste and a couturier is the price of the creation,” she explained. “It takes money to make money. With adequate funds, I’m quite capable of designing and creating with the best in London. In Paris, too, for that matter.”

He laughed. The sound was soft, but it was full and deep. More importantly, it brimmed with obviously sincere amusement and eased the knot around her heart. “You certainly don’t lack for confidence,” he observed.

“I’m the daughter of a duke,” Caroline replied. “Nobility is often just as much an attitude as it is the good fortune
of being born on the right side of the sheets. Do we have an agreement?”

“We do,” he said, nodding slowly, almost . . . well, appreciatively.

“I want it put into writing.”

His brow shot up again. “You don’t trust my word?”

Oh, she liked taking him by surprise. There was something decidedly satisfying in knowing that he didn’t have complete control of all the world and everyone and everything in it. “It’s nothing personal, Your Grace,” she assured him, coming around the end of the counter. “It’s simply that the last duke who promised a woman in my family something proved himself a liar. I learned from my mother’s mistake not to trust them any further than I can toss them.”

Drayton watched her head toward the curtain, certain that she was walking away just because she knew it irritated him. But since he’d won the larger battle of wills, he could afford to be magnanimous and let her have her little demonstration of defiance. “I will have my solicitor draw up the papers when I give him your ledger to settle. Fair enough?”

“Fair,” she said, disappearing without so much as a glance over her shoulder at him. “I won’t be but a few moments.”

He tilted his head and considered the curtain. If it was all a ruse and she bolted . . . He really should have thought of bringing his footman along to guard the rear door. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t inherited one. He had a slew of servants. Enough that he was constantly either tripping over them or bumping into them. At some point he was going to have to learn to think like a nobleman and actually use them.

And given the apparent intelligence, willfulness, and self-confidence of Caroline Dutton—no, it was Lady Caroline—he needed to get his feet under himself as quickly as possible. If he didn’t, the charade was going to be blown to tiny, embarrassingly public bits.

  Two  

HIS GAZE VERY STUDIOUSLY FASTENED ON THE WORLD
outside the carriage—on anything other than the woman sitting in the opposite seat—Drayton mulled his predicament. Caroline was what? His cousin three times removed? Which surely qualified them as hardly related at all. It certainly wasn’t as though she were a sister or a first cousin. So given all that, there really wasn’t anything unholy or grossly unnatural about noticing her physical attributes and imagining what might come of their forced companionship.

Brown wasn’t the color he would have chosen for her if he’d been asked for his opinion. And there was something rather off-putting about wool; silks and satins and fine, thin lawns were ever so much more inviting to the touch. But the fact that her traveling costume was made of brown wool and covered her from neck to wrist to ankle didn’t do a damned thing to detract from the wonderful curves it encased.

Neither did the little grosgrain-trimmed cape, the ruched overskirt, the fashionably sized bustle, or the straight skirt with the narrow knife pleats in brown satin around the hem. Combined with the perfectly proper and
matching brown kid gloves and the feather-adorned hat that hid most of her hair and made her eyes impossibly huge and her skin look like alabaster . . .

God, he was doing it again, he silently groaned. She was legally under his protection until a suitable husband could be found for her. Ogling your ward and wondering just how much of her incredibly tempting shape was due to corset boning and lacings and how much was the woman herself . . . It was not only socially unacceptable, it was a sign of complete mental depravity.

He had to get control of himself, firmly and quickly. And the surest way to do that, he knew from experience, was to become immersed in a battle. He slid a glance in her direction and squelched the idea of commenting on the drab color of her clothes. With his kind of luck, she’d retaliate by stripping naked and throwing them out the window. How a woman who’d been suddenly handed far more than she could have ever dreamed possible could sit on a plush seat in a private carriage and look so beautiful and so put out by it all . . .

He cocked a brow and seized the opportunity. “Are you planning to sulk for the rest of today?”

“Yes,” she answered crisply and without bothering to look at him. “And, quite likely, tomorrow and the next day, too.”

“Just as a point of information, gentlemen prefer their companions to be cheerfully distracting.”

She slowly turned her head to meet his gaze. “I see a series of great disappointments in your future.”

Yes, well, so did he and he preferred not to think about them. “You said that your Jane has a key to the shop,” he countered, pressing on with his plan for distraction. “You wrote her an excruciatingly long and detailed explanation.
You have more than adequately fulfilled all of your obligations as a proprietress and as an employer, and are being whisked off to a life of considerable luxury and great privilege. Forgive me, but I fail to see what it is that you have to sulk about.”

“Forgive me,” she said dryly, “if I’m less than delighted to be on a course I wasn’t allowed to choose for myself.”

“And do women in your world commonly get to chart their own ways?”

“Yes, until a man enters their lives and ties a millstone about their necks.”