The Duke (15 page)

B
randy awoke early the next morning with a slight headache, ravenous hunger, and an urgent desire to speak to the duke. Crabbe raised a surprised face as she crossed the front hall and hurried toward the breakfast room.

“Surely ye shouldn't be out of yer bed, miss,” he called after her. “Why, ye were as white as a mullet's craw yesterday.”

“I'm fit as a new penny this morning, Crabbe. Is the duke about yet?”

“Nay, miss. He was up even earlier this morning. Off with Master Bertrand to Clackmannanshire, I believe. The Cheviot sheep, ye know. Aye, Penderleigh will be rich once again with the duke at the helm. Sheep—beautiful, woolly sheep that will bring more groats than we've dreamed about fer years. Rich, what a lovely thought.”

Brandy couldn't remember a time when Penderleigh had been rich. The duke hadn't told her he was leaving today. She tried to hide her disappointment and walked ahead of Crabbe into the breakfast room. She served herself a large bowl of porridge, as Crabbe hovered like a clucking mother hen next to her.

“Master Percy also took his leave early this morning,” he said, pouring another spoon of porridge into
her bowl. “Honey, miss? Aye, surely ye want honey. It'll put the bloom back in yer young cheeks. Aye, Master Percy is gone, a good thing, I said.”

“A good thing indeed,” she said. “That's enough honey, thank ye. I wonder why he came in the first place. Just to cause mischief, I'll wager. But now he's gone again, so I won't think of him anymore.”

“I know why he left, miss,” Crabbe said, and she knew he was nearly frothing at the mouth to tell her. She was probably the only one who didn't know, since she'd been in her bed, deeply asleep with the laudanum Morag had given her.

She leaned close. “Can ye tell me, Crabbe? Is it all right?”

“Aye, I can tell ye, miss. Lady Adella ordered him to be gone last evening. Told him that she didn't want to see him again until he was no longer a bastard.” Crabbe actually smirked as he added, “Leastwise as regards his name, she said. He didn't like that, I can tell ye, but he had no choice but to take himself off. I myself saw him out the front door.”

“Then we've peace for a while. Did the duke say how long he would be gone?”

“Not long, Master Bertrand said. Indeed, they may even return today if all is in readiness for them. Master Bertrand said he didn't mind riding, even if it didn't gain them anything, since it was such a beautiful day.”

He might return today, she thought, and wanted to sing and smile at the same time. She ate her porridge instead.

Crabbe watched her eat for three minutes, then, satisfied, she supposed, that she wouldn't expire from her riding accident, he nodded and left the room. Brandy finished her porridge at a leisurely pace, her thoughts turning to Ian.

With the sheep purchased and on their way to
Penderleigh, it wouldn't be long now before he went home to England. After what had happened yesterday, she knew that he would have to leave the complications that she had piled on his head. Well, he'd done some piling too, but she'd been the one to start it, and she knew it. She hadn't thought about any consequences, she'd just reacted to him, a man, the only man she'd ever known that she admired. More than that, she loved him.

It was that clear, that simple. It was also just as clear and just as simple that he was betrothed, and a gentleman didn't break an engagement to a lady. The other lady would have him. There was simply no hope for it. She was the interloper, the outsider. She was the one who'd behaved badly. The other lady was doubtless in London thinking fond thoughts of the duke, knowing that he would be her husband, trusting him, thinking of him just as Brandy was. She was right to love the duke, for Brandy knew that he would return to London and he would marry that lady.

She had to accept it. The only man she wanted she could never have. And rightfully so. She was nothing, a poor Scottish female with nothing to her name, not beauty, not money. While he was magnificent, everything she was not and would never be. She stared silently at her empty porridge bowl. Then, forcing a smile, she went to the nursery to fetch Fiona. She wanted to get away from the castle, with all of its prying eyes. She bundled up Fiona and took her to the small cove where her boat was moored.

It was late in the afternoon when she bore Fiona back to the castle, both of them damp with salt spray and windblown. There was a strange carriage standing at the front of the castle. Another one, older, the horses blown, drawn up behind it.

“Perhaps it is one of Grandmama's friends,” she said to Fiona, and drew the child with her into the
front entrance hall. Her feet suddenly froze to the ground at the sight of the most beautiful lady she had ever seen in her life. She was standing beside that first carriage, looking at Penderleigh. She was small, with a gloriously slender figure that made Brandy so jealous she wanted to howl. She was wearing a golden traveling gown that fit snugly under her normal-sized bosom and fell in straight lines to her delicately shod toes. This was how the gown Ian had bought her from Edinburgh should look. This lady's bosom wasn't falling out of the gown, not at all. She looked elegant, very confident, and well she should. Her black curls framed her face under a bonnet of matching gold straw with bunches of darker gold ribbons, glossy as a raven's wing. Her eyes were slightly slanted and a deep leaf green, fringed by thick black lashes.

Then to Brandy's surprise, she saw Ian come around the side of the carriage. The lady held out both her hands to him. Brandy watched as he strode to her, took her hands, raised them, and kissed her fingers. Then the lady was speaking to Ian, laughing up at him, and he was smiling down at her. Brandy knew that the lady was the duke's betrothed. Actually, she'd known the first instant who she was. She'd felt it. The two of them looked like they belonged together, both elegant, both confident, both with a natural arrogance that seemed right. Suddenly the lady turned, as if sensing her presence, and gave a light trill of laughter.

She said in a loud, very clear voice, “Why, your grace, Scotland is indeed a strange country. But look, you allow your servants to enter through the front door. These are the front doors, are they not? It's difficult to tell since it all looks like a rather dismal pile of gray stones. That one turret over there is crumbling. I trust I won't have to go near it.”

Why, that malicious bitch. She just lost some of her beauty and elegance in Brandy's eyes. Indeed, Brandy,
who'd wanted for an instant to change places with that exquisite piece of womanhood, now wanted to smack her. Brandy's eyes flew to Ian's face. He was standing perfectly still. There was no expression on his face.

“Careful, my dear, you are sailing in uncharted water,” another gentleman said in a silky smooth, almost mocking voice. He'd just stepped out of the carriage. He shook the duke's hand as he spoke. At any other time Brandy would have been sorely tempted to laugh at his outlandish costume, so many gold buttons and fobs were there on his coat and waistcoat. But instead she stood in wretched silence, her hand tightening painfully about Fiona's fingers, wanting to yell at the lady and knowing she couldn't. She was learning quickly that life could be the very devil.

“Brandy, ye're hurting me,” Fiona cried, and tugged Brandy's arm. She released Fiona's hand as Ian stepped resolutely forward. Fiona ran to Ian and grinned shamelessly up at him, holding up her arms. Ian laughed and picked her up, lifting her over his head, shaking her and making her shriek with laughter.

“I must put you down now, Fiona. Ah, Brandy, I'm glad you're here. You're feeling better, aren't you?”

“Aye, I'm fine,” she said shortly, not moving an inch toward him.

“I would like you to meet Lady Felicity Trammerley. Felicity, this is Brandy, the eldest of my female cousins. And this delightful bundle of enthusiasm is Fiona, my youngest cousin.”

“Your cousins?” Felicity said blankly. “Both of these persons are your cousins?”

“That is what he said, Felicity,” the other gentleman said.

“Well, then. How very delighted I am, to be sure,” Lady Felicity said, only slightly inclining her graceful neck. So Brandy is the
different one,
she thought.
Those were the duke's strange words in his letter to her. And she'd known, she'd known immediately, that there was danger here. Ah, but she'd been dead wrong. Different indeed. To think that she, an earl's daughter and an acclaimed beauty, could ever have imagined that the Duke of Portmaine could possibly be interested in such a disheveled, frowzy brat who dressed like a peasant and smelled like a fish. And he was holding that other little urchin as if he enjoyed it. It made her toes curl. How could he have forgotten so quickly who and what he was, and particularly what he owed to her, his future wife?

Brandy blurted out, “Fiona and I have been fishing.”

“Aye,” Fiona said as Ian set her back on her feet, “but we didn't catch anything because Brandy's head ached and she just wanted to sit in the boat and do nothing.”

Contempt was plain in Lady Felicity's slanted eyes. She turned back to the duke. “All of this is very odd. My mother would never have allowed me to be out all day in a boat. So brown one becomes. It isn't healthy. It isn't proper. One becomes quite ugly.”

Brandy's hands were fists at her sides. She was very close to damning everything to the devil and leaping on this miserable lady who was such a pain in the arse, as Uncle Claude would say, then cackle. How dare she act like she'd just come into a savage land and look at all the inhabitants as if they weren't fit to polish her boots?

The gentleman with all the fobs stepped forward. He said with faint amusement, “Brandy, is it? A quaint name, my dear, and charming. I am Giles Braidston, you know. Ian's
English
cousin.”

Brandy didn't want to, but she dipped a curtsy. He seemed nice, much more like Ian, but still, he'd come with this Felicity and she didn't trust him an inch. There were many ways to throw out insults.

“Are those buttons real gold?” Fiona demanded, a dirty hand already reaching out. “Ye look like one of those beautiful peacocks I saw once before Grandmama got angry with it and had Cook bake it for dinner.”

“An accolade indeed. I hope I won't end up in Cook's baking pot like that poor peacock. You like these buttons, do you? Yes, they are real gold, and when you have clean hands you may touch them, all right?”

“I'll do it right now. Nice and clean, ye'll see.” Fiona dashed away from them toward the stairs. “I'll be back in but a moment, sir. Ye'll not forget yer promise, will ye?”

He laughed and waved Fiona way. “I never forget anything,” he called after her.

“Have you taken leave of your senses, Giles?” Lady Felicity said, a dark brow arched upward. “Given half a chance, she will probably tear them off your coat and chew on them. Goodness, she'll lose them.”

Ian frowned. How could Felicity show such a want of manners? It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her to mind her tongue when he suddenly remembered his own first impressions of Penderleigh and Scotland. It was certainly not what Felicity was used to, and he admitted that it must all be quite a shock to her. She gazed up at him at that moment with melting eyes—Marianne's eyes—and he forced a smile.

Brandy saw that look and wanted to stuff her in that old rusted cannon and fire it and her off into oblivion. “Excuse me,” she said to no one in particular, and walked quickly toward the stairs, trying as best she could to keep her back straighter than Grandmama's cane and her chin proudly in the air.

“So this is Penderleigh Castle, eh, Ian?” Giles said, breaking the brief tension. “At least you're not wearing kilts yet, old boy. No, still that severe style you
insist upon. Ah, but it's a grand old pile, isn't it? When was it built, I wonder. It must be at least four hundred years old. Look at those turrets. Felicity's right. That one is about ready to crumble to the ground. Too bad it's not a seaward one; then it could just fall into the sea and not trouble anyone overly.”

“Nay, Giles, no kilts for me just yet. I haven't the nerve, truth be told. But Bertrand, another cousin, informs me that I have the legs for the kilt.”

“
Nay
and
kilts,
dear sir?” Lady Felicity said in a sweet voice that made Ian's belly turn sour. “I fear that if you do not speak English, I shall have difficulty understanding you.”

The duke wished for many things at that moment, but uppermost was his desire to wave his hand and have Felicity and Giles magically gone, back in London. But it wasn't to be. He was their host. He thought of Lady Adella and winced. Oh, Lord, that was going to be something. “Do forgive me, my dear. I have told Crabbe—he's the Penderleigh butler—to inform Lady Adella of your coming. Come, let's go inside, although the day is glorious. Shall we go into the drawing room?”