Rules to Catch a Devilish Duke (19 page)

They decided on an intricate, braided knot coiled at the top of her head, with long, wispy strands at her temples and artfully escaping down the nape of her neck. If she said so herself, she’d never looked better even on her best nights at The Tantalus Club. When the ladies and gentlemen began sending her disdainful looks, it would be because of her parentage, and not her appearance. And if they could dismiss her for something in which she’d had no part, shame on them. In an odd way, it enabled her to look down on them the very same way they looked down on her. For tonight, annoyed as she was that their arrival had ruined her private, glorious holiday, it would have to be enough.

“I think you’ll do,” Milly said appraisingly. “Those grand ladies will have to look their best if they want a hope of holding a candle to you.”

Sophia grimaced. “Don’t say that, Milly. I just want to make it difficult for them to ignore me for once.”

“Well, His Grace won’t be ignoring you. That’s for certain.”

“Adam and I are friends. Nothing more.”

“Well, between you and me, all the servants know about that ‘nothing more.’ Not that we’d say anything. His Grace values his privacy, and so we see to it.”

Oh, dear.
“Thank you for that,” she said. “But it’s true. We’re simply friends. I’m not attempting to do anything tonight but hold my head high. I don’t have many opportunities to do so, and soon I won’t have any at all.”

The housekeeper gave her a hug, careful not to cause any wrinkles or out-of-place curls. “You’re a brave girl, Sophia. I wouldn’t have the nerve to live the way you do. And I’ll be cheering for you, tonight.”

“You are a very kind woman, Milly. Thank you.”

By the time they finished fiddling with her hair, the guests had begun to gather in the drawing room to await the call to dinner. The feeling in the pit of her stomach reminded her of how she’d felt the night The Tantalus Club had opened—a certain dubious hope that everything would go well, accompanied by a very strong suspicion that she and her fellow employees would be run out of Town by morning. The Tantalus had been and continued to be a success, but the odds tonight seemed much less promising.

At the foot of the stairs she paused. She’d intentionally timed her arrival so that she wouldn’t be either the first or the last person to arrive for dinner, but that meant a dozen people stood about chatting among themselves in the decorated drawing room. Well, she’d faced worse before, and hopefully Adam and her friends would be present already. Squaring her shoulders, she stepped through the doorway.

Her friends weren’t there. Instead, twelve pairs of eyes turned in her direction. “Good evening,” she said, inclining her head.

The two guests nearest her, females who looked enough alike to be like sisters, turned their backs on her and continued chatting. With a stifled sigh she continued forward, toward an empty chair beneath the window.

“You’re from the Tantalus, ain’t you?” a male voice asked from behind her, his voice loud enough that anyone who hadn’t known that information previously, would now.

“Yes, I am,” she answered, facing the voice’s source. A short, rotund man with a thinning head of short brown hair stood beneath the twigs of mistletoe—though she doubted that was intentional. “Mr. Henning, isn’t it?”

“That’s me; Francis Henning. Lord Haybury had me at the club as a guest. Play’s a bit too rich for my blood, though. Grandmama would shoot me if I lost my going-about-Town blunt to wagering.”

Well, at least Mr. Henning gave away his own secrets as well as everyone else’s. “You’re a friend of His Grace’s, then?”

“I think I was sitting at the table when he invited Haybury, but he was kind enough to include me.”

That
was interesting. She’d had no idea that Lord and Lady Haybury—her employers and the owners of The Tantalus Club—had been invited to Yorkshire. Given the rumors of the bad blood between Oliver and Adam she wasn’t surprised they hadn’t come, but Diane might have mentioned that they’d declined an invitation. A few more allies would have been nice.

The guests closest by the door stirred, and she turned as Adam Baswich strolled into the room. He’d dressed in black and gray, and looked both formidable and attractive all at the same time. Belatedly she curtsied as the rest of the guests sank before him. Odd that she’d done that on their previous meetings in London, but she’d never thought to do so at Greaves Park.

“Good evening,” he said to the room at large. “Thank you for coming to my slightly delayed party.” He nodded into the scattered applause. “Most of you are acquainted, and some of you have been here in previous years, so you know that the house and horses and staff are yours, and that we don’t particularly stand on ceremony.” He rubbed his hands together. “Now. Let’s have some roast venison, shall we?”

Twelve, no fifteen more people appeared, at least eight of them females, and they all moved across the hallway to the main dining room. Sophia had never eaten in there, and the display of polished silver and crystal was nearly blinding in the chandelier light. Generally at a formal event the diners would have been arranged in an intricate combination of rank and sex, so that no one would have to chat with anyone too far below his or her station. Tonight, however, other than the rush to sit close to Greaves at the head of the table, everyone took a chair where they pleased.

Males were rather outnumbered, though she doubted their lack of presence had anything to do with the reason that no one pulled out the chair she’d selected—until Udgell appeared from nowhere to do so for her. She sent the butler a grateful smile. “Thank you,” she whispered, and he inclined his head, setting the napkin across her lap before he vanished again.

It wasn’t until nearly everyone was settled that she realized the chairs on either side of her were empty. If she’d needed any additional proof that the fairy tale of winter at Greaves Park was over, that answered it.

*   *   *

Adam seated himself at the head of the table. Immediately he noted that Eustace had joined the party and ensconced herself between Lord Timmerlane and her good friend Prudence, Lady Scoffield. He didn’t like that she was present to spit her venom, but he supposed that, as she was the party’s hostess, he couldn’t very well keep her locked in her rooms.

The next moment he noticed Sophia seated two thirds of the way down the left side of the long table—and the empty seats around her. He drew in a breath, annoyed. Yes, he’d partly invited her because her presence would cause a stir, but he hadn’t intended for her to be ostracized. Or rather, it had never occurred to him that her presence at Greaves Park might cause her pain. And as resigned as she was to the unalterable … stiffness of her fellows, even with the greater unkindness shoved upon her by her father, it did have to hurt.

As he was debating whether to order everyone to move closer and take up any empty seats, Keating appeared in the doorway, his blond-haired nymph of a wife on his arm. A low mutter traveled down the length of the table, which didn’t surprise him in the least. With a quick glance about the room, Keating pulled out the chair to Sophia’s right for Camille, then seated himself to her left—which clearly discomfited Miss Rebecca Hart on his other side.

Udgell and the footmen served a fine quail egg soup, and Adam attempted to relax into the conversation. Generally he wore this persona—the pleasant, charming, slightly standoffish one he showed to Society—like a second skin. Tonight, however, the fit seemed tight. Considering that he needed to choose one bride from among the dozen single females he’d invited, and considering that he was predisposed to dislike anyone who flung herself at him, he understood the reason for his own consternation. But it still needed to be done. At the same time, the chit who kept catching his eye was the least appropriate, most unique female in Yorkshire.

“So tell me, Greaves,” the Marquis of Drymes said from immediately to his right, “the redhead, Hennessy’s by-blow, she’s been here for nearly a fortnight, hasn’t she?”

“Miss White? Yes. Her coach went through the ice when the bridge collapsed. She nearly drowned.”

“A pity she didn’t,” he heard Eustace say. From that distance he couldn’t retaliate without alerting everyone in the room to the argument, so he ignored the faint comment. For the moment.

Drymes was chuckling. “You’ve outdone yourself this time, Greaves—a murderer, a runaway bride, a highborn whore, and the loveliest selection of marriageable young ladies in the country. Is Miss White yours, or may anyone imbibe?”

“I believe that’s up to Miss White,” he heard himself say.

By now she and Camille Blackwood were chatting like the close friends he knew them to be, and when she grinned several of the few gentlemen present looked in her direction. In that deep gray gown he’d had made for her, she positively dazzled. At the time he’d ordered it, he’d thought she would wear it to one of their private dinners. This—he wasn’t certain he liked it, and he wasn’t certain why that was.

“I had my eye on her at the Tantalus,” Drymes continued, “but you know the blasted rules there. If the damned place wasn’t so popular, Lady H would never get away with it, much less with her bloody ‘hands off’ shit.”

“It ain’t hands off,” Aubrey Burroughs put in from two seats farther down the table. “You can’t touch the chits without their permission, is all.” He flashed a grin, an expression several women had deemed swoonworthy. “A bauble or two gains their permission. Trust me.”

“You men and your fascinations.” Lady Caroline Emery gave a mock scowl. “There are proper females here, you know. Chat about your scandalous liaisons over cigars and port; dinner is where we discuss legitimate matches, and we ask questions like whether His Grace has decided it’s time to put the ladies of Mayfair out of their misery and finally marry.”

He lifted an eyebrow. Despite the convenient turn of conversation, he was reluctant to begin the nonsense. If better than five hundred thousand pounds’ worth of property and holdings hadn’t been involved, he wouldn’t have done it. Marrying was one thing that didn’t require a deadline to make it even more troublesome. Adam took a slow, deep breath. “That is an interesting suggestion, Caroline. And there are certainly a goodly number of eligible and lovely young ladies present, if I should decide to do so.”

The surrounding diners actually applauded, excited tittering and nervous laughter passing through the group in a growing wave. “Are you serious, Greaves?” Burroughs chortled. “Because you’ve just raised the hopes of a thousand pining women.”

“I think the number present is more than adequate,” he returned, and offered the room at large a toast.

Prudence Jones, the daughter of Viscount Halifax, fainted in her chair. Good God. And it would only get worse from here. As Miss Jones was revived and the plates of venison were brought in, Adam glanced about the table again. Not one of them stirred anything in him other than a mild disgust that they were so easily willing to be wooed by the likes of him. And their mommas had been all too happy to make the journey with them—whether they had pretended to be surprised by the news that he was spouse hunting or not, they’d already come to that conclusion. Otherwise, what was the damned point of a pinch-faced vulture like Lady Halifax and her ilk journeying all the way to Yorkshire? The viscountess loathed his lifestyle to his face and envied his position to his back. And most of them were precisely the same.

“Did you shoot the deer, Greaves?” Francis Henning asked from halfway down the table.

At least he had a few odd friends and hangers-on in the mix. “I did. A fine eight-point buck. There’s still some good shooting to be done, if anyone’s interested; the rumor is that half a dozen or so Christmas turkeys escaped drowning when the mail coach went into the Aire.”

“Oh, that would be sterling!” Henning exclaimed, his opinion echoed by most of the men at the table.

“I’ll arrange it, then,” Adam said, nodding. “Tomorrow, if the weather’s clear.”

“Tell me you have raisins, Your Grace,” Miss Sylvia Hart, Rebecca’s younger sister, pleaded with a bright smile. “I do so look forward to playing snapdragon at Christmas.”

Before he could respond to that, everyone began to chime in with their favorite games and activities at Christmastime. From Caroline’s commentary it looked as if they would be singing carols again—Caroline delighted in showing off her skills at the pianoforte.

Adam risked a look down the length of the table again. Ignoring him and everyone else who seemed to ignore her, Sophia was evidently reenacting her ice fishing triumph for Keating and Camille. Even the cynical William Clint, Lord Lassiter, across the table from her offered the briefest, faintest of smiles—though Lassiter wasn’t precisely known for upholding Society’s highest standards.

As far as he was concerned, dismissing Sophia was Society’s loss; he knew for a fact that she was a fine conversationalist and a keen wit. And no, he didn’t want Drymes or anyone else going near her with their propositions and their baubles. Unless he laid claim to her, though, he wasn’t certain how to prevent it. And as he was wife hunting and a well-respected, high-ranking member of the
ton
and she was not his mistress, he needed to be cautious in proclaiming any sort of public connection to her.

That was simply the way things were. In addition, Eustace wasn’t the only one aware of the late Duke of Greaves’s fondness for redheads. And the only thing worse than his sister proclaiming that he was living down to their father’s reputation would be for anyone else to do so.

NINE

Sophia stood in the morning room, which looked out over the frozen garden and the riding path beyond. A quartet of riders trotted by, kicking up the loose snow and evidently on their way into Hanlith. Miss Rebecca Hart looked especially fetching in her dark green riding habit as she sat upon Copper.

“You look very nice,” Camille commented, as she strolled into the room. “I can see why you haven’t borrowed any of my clothes.”

Sophia took a breath and turned away from the window. “Evidently generations of visitors here have left behind articles of clothing. Mrs. Brooks is exceptional at finding ones that fit me, or altering them so that they do.”