The Duke's Disaster (R) (11 page)

What did one of the most sought-after courtesans in London consider a repairing lease?

“Henrietta Whitlow, do I need to send my man of business around?”

Her finger stopped its endless circling on the gilded lip. “You are so dear. I’m considering retiring.”

London’s bachelors would go into a collective decline. “You’re that well fixed?”

“I’m that lonely.”

A silence stretched between them in the warm afternoon air. They had been friends, after a fashion, but Noah would have described it as a friendship where each party was burdened with a loneliness the other never intended to assuage.

“I will be known as the man who drove you from your business,” Noah said, trying for a touch of levity. “Not well done of me.”

“Or you will be known as the man who brought me to my senses in time?”

“Henrietta?”

“My menses approach.” Her bluntness might have shocked other men; Noah was used to it. “Welcome as always, of course, but don’t mind my mood. You did not stop by here to renew our arrangement, and if you did, you will please pretend you did not.”

“I did not. What do you know of Grantley?”

“Timotheus Collins.” Henrietta nodded, a lady about her business. “Useless, intemperate, but not mean. Yet. Shamefully negligent of his sisters, but did adequately at school, funds still managed by his solicitors, which will soon end. He’s not quite pockets to let, unless it’s the end of the quarter, but he’s foolish in his choice of friends.”

God bless a woman who took her work seriously. “Who might they be?”

“The typical studies in uselessness,” she said, listing a half-dozen names. “Lately he’s been in company with Corbett Hallowell a great deal.”

“Of course.” It would be Hallowell, who was likely spoiling for an excuse to call Noah out. God spare a hapless duke from silly young men whose antics made the little debutantes look like seasoned diplomats. “Does anyone hold Grantley’s vowels?”

“Hallowell, to the greatest extent.” Henrietta buttered herself a piece of toast. “You’re married to Grantley’s older sister. Pretty girl. Poor thing went into service.”

“Fled into service, I’m coming to believe.”

Henrietta aimed a basilisk stare at him over her toast. “Are you being decent to her, Anselm? Lady Araminthea is an earl’s daughter and deserving of every consideration.”

A faint echo of James’s lectures sounded in Noah’s memory. “
You
are giving me marital advice, Hen?”

“If more men were better prepared to become husbands, I’d have far less trade to choose from, Anselm.” She tossed her flaming mane over one shoulder in a gesture that earned the attention of royal dukes across a crowded theater. “One can’t expect these gently bred young ladies to know what’s what in bed. You have to show them, and you’re perfectly capable of explaining—Are you laughing at me?”

Noah would miss her, though not in his bed. “You accuse me of being a mother hen,
Hen
?”

“You are impertinent,” she said, taking a regal sip of her tea and reminding him of Bathsheba, or even a little of Thea, when her chin came up. “You courted the woman for less than a week, then spirited her off to your peasant abode, and you’ve no doubt executed your marital duties with all brisk dispatch. Didn’t I teach you anything?”

“Henrietta, a change of topic is in order.”

“No, it is not.” She rose and glared down her undainty nose at him. “You are a good man, Anselm, better even than you know, but you’re mucking this up. I can tell.”

Noah was coming to loathe the verb
to
muck
.

“How can you tell?” He rose as well and not only because manners decreed he must. A man wanted to be on his feet when his former mistress impugned his intimate skills.

“You’re here, aren’t you?” Henny asked.

“Here,” Noah agreed, “on your back terrace, not inside. Not inside your house, not inside you.”

She regarded him for a long, thoughtful minute, and Noah knew a frisson of unease. Henny in a rant was magnificent. Henny with that look on her face made a man leery.

“I suppose that’s something,” she conceded, resuming her seat. “More toast?”

More toast? Noah paced off, his back to her, while the sounds of cutlery and porcelain tinkled through the fragrant summer air.

“I sleep with my wife.” Now where in the hell had that come from?

“Do you, now?”

Noah traced the petals of a blushing pink rose, his back still to his hostess. “That’s about all we do between the sheets.”

“She’s shy?”

“She’s—Hen, I was not her first.”

Cutlery clattered onto a plate and a chair scraped back. Henny soon stood behind Noah. He could sense her there, could smell her fragrance. If he turned, she’d allow him to take her in his arms.

“You would be upset about something like this,” she said, “because you are a goose—or a gander, I suppose. I gather you did not know before the vows were said?”

“That’s just it.” Noah moved away a few steps and half turned, while Henny remained by the roses. “I think my wife tried to tell me, but she just…couldn’t, Hen. Then she did, a few intimate moments too late, but she knows nothing. She barely knows how to kiss, and she… What?”

“You are assuming your lady had an affair, Anselm, but women in service are considered prey by every man under the age of eighty, including their employers. I know this firsthand.”

Henny had leaped to the very conclusion Noah had avoided for several days. “How come you to this knowledge, Henrietta?”

She flounced back to the table, and Henny could flounce with the best of them.

“Do you think I woke up one morning and decided to be the Whore of Mayfair, Anselm?”

Noah had never considered Henny’s past, hadn’t wanted to consider it, but, yes. He’d assumed Henny enjoyed being naughty and somehow always had.

“You’re not a whore.”

“Anselm…” Her tone was infinitely gentle. “I have two brothers and a grandmother. I am an aunt twice over, I have cousins. Do you think their regard means so little I would gaily toss aside my virtue for even this?” She held up her wrist, where a gorgeous bracelet of gold and emeralds winked in the sunlight.

“I’m…sorry, Henny. I had no idea.”

“You aren’t supposed to have any idea.” She dropped her hand back to her side, shaking her arm so her dressing gown covered Noah’s parting gift. “The fiction that I’d choose this life above all others is part of what lets you and others of your ilk bed down with me. But back to your duchess, with whom you sleep. Are you asking me for advice?”

“I suppose I am.” What else was he to say? Henny Whitlow had a grandmother, and brothers. Plural. Cousins, some of them no doubt quite small, maybe all of them dependent upon her.

“Do you know what I like about you most, Anselm?”

Noah snapped off a pink blossom and passed it to her. “I am loath to speculate, when you have already called into question my amatory skills.”

“Don’t sulk.” She gave him the queen of all unsympathetic grins and set the rose behind her ear. “You are frightfully competent in bed, Anselm. You even taught me a thing or two, but you can wipe that smirk off your face. What I liked most about you, and you may freely note the past tense, is your affectionate nature.”

The entire world had gone stark raving tootled. “I am a duke. I do
not
have an affectionate nature.”

“I am not accusing you of the randy foolishness that characterizes your uncle, Anselm. I am telling you, just this once admitting to you, that what I looked forward to most about time spent with you was when you would hold me, afterward, and ask me about my day and tell me about yours.”

A look passed over Henny’s striking features, one Noah wished he hadn’t seen, an expression of longing and vulnerability.

“You went to bed with me to
talk
?”

“I did.” Her gaze was appallingly serious, even wistful. “To talk, to cuddle up, to visit, to be with you, not simply with your manly exuberance or your skills.”

“This has to do with that loneliness you mentioned,” he ventured. “You’re a
professional
, Hen.” An admonition, or an expression of disappointment. The observation sounded bewildered to Noah’s own ears.

“I am a human being, Anselm. A person, and so, my friend, are you.”

Henrietta showed Noah out soon after, but she’d gone up on her toes to kiss his cheek, reminding him starkly of his wife.

Who was a person too.

To know he wouldn’t be dropping in on Henny again should have made Noah sad—married men weren’t welcome to drop in on her, Henny had her rules—but mostly as he swung onto True’s back, Noah felt relief. Like finding the tea cakes weren’t sitting on their usual shelf in the larder, when the temptation to ruin dinner was calling loudly.

The call had served its purpose nonetheless. Henny had told Noah what he needed to know about Grantley, and many other things he hadn’t wanted to know.

About himself.

Eleven

“So you’ve met my demon cousins?” Harlan asked as he patted his new gelding, upon whom he’d yet to bestow a proper name.

“You mean Evvie and Nini?” Thea was up on Della, their choice of riding paths limited by the recent rains.

“The demons,” Harlan said. “They blink those great blue eyes at you, exuding such innocence, then steal a sip of your tea and hare off in a storm of giggles, but you can’t be angry when they’re so adorable with it.”

“Stealing tea seems to be an inherited trait. Have you always known about them?” Thea asked. The girls were technically Harlan’s nieces, if Noah was their father—which he had not denied.

“Of course I’ve known about them.” Harlan’s assurance sounded much like his older brother’s. “They are family. Noah would no more fail to acknowledge them than he would me.” Harlan speared Thea with his own innocent blue-eyed gaze. “I gather you and my brother are having a rocky start?”

Brave lad.

“I hope you gather nothing of the kind, Harlan Winters, and if you did, it wouldn’t be gentlemanly to remark on it.”

He held his mount back to allow Thea to steer Della down the only dry patch between two puddles.

“Perhaps not gentlemanly,” Harlan said, slight color rising from under his collar. “Maybe brotherly. You should give Noah a chance.”

“Marriages are complicated,” Thea said. “Your loyalty to Noah speaks well of you both. Shall we turn back? We’ll not get in a gallop in this wet footing.”

“We could stick to the road,” Harlan said, eyeing the damp track before them. “The rain stopped last night.”

Thea had her own reasons for taking their time on the way home.

“We neither of us know our mounts that well,” she pointed out. “The better part of sportsmanship would be to show caution. Then too, we are without grooms because you are my escort, and I don’t think you brought a firearm, if one of the horses should break a leg in this mud.”

Harlan made a very adolescent face, but he turned his horse at the walk beside Della.

“What a cheering thought. Noah tells me, when I’m out of patience with the demon cousins, to get used to it, because the adult version is even more wily. I see him with our sisters, and now with you, and I believe him.”

Little girls were not demons. “What do you mean?”

“You didn’t ask, what if a horse breaks a leg in the mud? You noted that I’d neglected to bring a gun—and you put the matter with all possible diffidence. Diabolical of you.”

“So I’m a demon too?”

“Noah’s demon.” Harlan used his crop to thwack at the branch above his side of the lane, sending a shower of drops down on him and his horse. “Noah’s the best brother, Thea. I had tutors until I was fourteen, and then I went up to Rugby, and I was one of the new fellows.”

Maybe the male equivalent of being a debutante. “That was hard?”

“I made it worse. I’m taller than most, and I’ve always been fast.”

“You brawled.” Thea tried not to sound dismayed. Tims and his friends were always debating pugilistic science.

“The headmasters look the other way, because boys must sort themselves out. I’d got a fine education at home, and hadn’t the sense to keep that fact to myself. Somebody’s older brother must have said something to Noah, because I usually sported a black eye or two, a split lip, and so on. I had a bad few weeks.”

Weeks seemed like forever to the adolescent—or the newly married. “What happened?”

“My brother dropped everything and came to visit me,” Harlan said. “Noah inspected my rooms, met with each of my professors, took me off for a round of clothes shopping, brought my horse up to stable locally, laid in a supply of food, and somehow quietly let the lads know my allowance was adequate to maintain that supply.”

“You never suffered another black eye?”

“If I did, it was in a fair fight, Thea. Not a matter of four of the fellows jumping me while two others whaled on me with their riding crops. No one used my nickname after it became obvious the Duke of Anselm’s visit wasn’t an isolated occasion.”

Thea was fiercely glad Noah had not believed boys should be left to sort themselves out through endless violence.

“What did the food have to do with the situation, Harlan?”

“At public school, we never have enough food, much less enough good food,” Harlan said. “Growing boys can eat like grown men only dream of, and the headmasters say it teaches us self-discipline to be on short, bad rations. I say it made us mean, tired, and irritable, and I think Noah agreed. I made money off it, in fact.”

Engaging in trade, like his ducal brother, because trade had been the family’s salvation. “You sold your stores.”

“At a modest profit. All the boys had allowances, and food was a better use of their money than the watered ale at the local posting inn. When I went up to university, I passed my enterprise on to a pair of the new boys, whose older brothers were leaving with me.”

“Did Noah give you the idea for this tactic?” They were approaching the stables, and Thea hadn’t asked the things she’d wanted to, about Noah, and the dem—the little girls, and his trips into Town.

“I can’t decide if the scheme was Noah’s.” Harlan turned his horse up the drive beside hers. “I’ve decided Noah planted the idea but let me think it was mine.”

“He’s a good big brother, then.” Noah was a good duke, too, and possibly even a decent, if aggrieved and cautious, husband.

“He’s a good
man
,” Harlan countered. “Noah isn’t as charming or easy to spend time with as other men, not for a lady, anyway. I’ve told him he should have practiced his flirting before he tried to get a wife, and he laughed.”

Harlan helped Thea dismount from her mare and then offered his arm as the grooms led the horses away.

“Harlan, what was your nickname?”

“Not fit for a lady’s ears,” Harlan muttered, posture straight as they made their way toward the house.

“I could ask Noah.”

The pink was creeping up his neck again. “One forgets you have a brother, so you’re not without guile.”

“I’m also sister to Lady Antoinette, whose company you seemed to enjoy.”

“You must never tell her,” Harlan said, sparing Thea a single uneasy glance.

“I will never tell her,” Thea said, thinking that boys were really too serious over something as inconsequential as a schoolyard nickname.

“Harlot,” he said very quietly. “They all, all of them, at every turn, called me Harlot. Excuse me.”

On his long legs, he turned and headed back to the stables, his face averted from Thea’s horrified gaze.

* * *

“Tell me you didn’t visit your harlot less than two weeks after your wedding, Anselm.”

Heath Carruthers had waited the duration of a dawn hack through Hyde Park to spring his question, which was typical of him. He was married to Penelope, who as the baby sister, had been ever so slightly spoiled by her older siblings.

Carruthers had a Gypsy darkness about his lean height, and a mind equally given to dark twists and skewed humor. He characterized his wife as the embodiment of sweetness and generosity, for example.

“I needed information from Henrietta,” Noah said, “and she provided it.”

Carruthers kneed his mount—a stolid gray by the name of Horatio—to a more brisk walk, because True set a faster pace—not that Noah was in a hurry to end the conversation.

“Would this be the same variety of information I’ve provided your sister almost nightly for the past four years?” Carruthers inquired.

“Must you, Carruthers?”

“When my informing has born consequences, yes. Your sister and I are in anticipation of an interesting event. You may congratulate me, Anselm.”

Hyde Park was beautiful in the early morning. Sunshine bounced off the Serpentine, mist rose from low-lying ground, and the occasional rabbit snatched a few last nibbles of sparkling green grass.

All of London was stirring and stretching into a new day, hundreds of thousands of souls, and yet, Noah felt alone.

“Penny is doing well?” Noah asked, because that was what a brother asked. Penny had the constitution of a plow horse to go with her demanding nature, and she had Carruthers to spoil her rotten.

“She’s taking good care of herself,” Carruthers said. “She, Patience, and Pru are very much in one another’s pockets.”

While Noah had removed to Kent, with the bride who hadn’t trusted him until it was too late. The bride he did not trust, rather.

“Your papa must be pleased,” Noah managed. “Congratulations, and if anything happens to my youngest sister, I will geld you.”

“And Wilson and James?”

Well, of course. “Them too. I gather Prudence is also on the nest?”

“I think the ladies planned it this way,” Carruthers said as Park Lane came into view. “When you announced your intention to go bride hunting, they all grew quiet, and
affectionate
. Wilson and James noticed the same thing. More affectionate even than usual.”

“Women.” And sisters, turning up more affectionate than usual, causing Noah to wish his marriage were different. Thea would enjoy a hack through the park first thing in the day, and she’d look very fetching on her mare too.

“You’ll be next, won’t you, Anselm?” Carruthers had to nudge his horse again. “That was the purpose of the marriage, as I recall. Time to set up the nursery, see to the succession, but if you’re visiting Henny, perhaps there’s trouble in paradise already.”

If Carruthers were speculating, then Noah’s situation was hopeless, because unlike James and Patience, Heath and Penelope had no discretion. They discussed
everything
with each other.

“Tell me, Carruthers, has James been bearing tales?” James, Noah’s oldest and dearest friend. Impending fatherhood apparently made traitors of otherwise good men.

“Tales about you? Of course not, but Penny is worried for her oldest brother, and she’s off in corners with Patience and Pru. I’d be least in sight if I were you. Maybe time to visit the holdings in Cardiff with the new duchess, if you know what I mean.”

Cardiff would mean days in a coach, with Thea dozing by Noah’s side. Thea’s feet in his lap. Thea sharing the wild, beautiful Welsh vistas with him…

“I’m lucky all three sisters aren’t camped on my doorstep right now,” Noah said. “Lucky, and fortunate in my brothers-in-law.”

Carruthers waggled a gloved finger. “See that you never forget it, Anselm, and heed me when I tell you now isn’t the time to be crying on Henny’s milk-white shoulders.”

They were actually freckled shoulders, and a trifle mannish in their breadth, not like Thea, whose proportions were feminine perfection itself.

“I dropped in on Henny to gather information on Grantley,” Noah said. “It’s time to buy the boy’s vowels and bring him to heel.”

Carruthers’s horse chose that moment to come to a complete stop, lift its tail, and leave a steaming pile of manure at the park’s entrance.

“Even Horatio has no respect for Grantley,” Carruthers said as the gelding toddled on. “One fears for a young buck without anyone to reel him in from time to time. I well recall those uncomfortable lectures from the marquess—temperance, dignity, economy, family name, and all that.”

In his turn, Carruthers would deliver the same pointless lectures to his own son.

“Because you are the spare,” Noah said, “I’m sure the occasional admonition to marry found its way into the quarterly sermons.”

Grantley was of age. Why hadn’t he contracted marriage with some sweet, young, well-dowered thing?

“Papa never harped on marriage.” Carruthers’s nonchalant tone belied the sensitivity of the topic. “The marquess has always expected my older brother to find a bride, regardless that Owen states clearly he will not.”

Because Owen had left-handed tendencies, as was known to all save the man’s own father.

“You’ll not outrank me even if you inherit,” Noah said. “Make sure my sister is reminded of that fact regularly.”

“She outclasses you, old man, and always will.”

“Besotted,” Noah spat. “On the nest and besotted, the bleeding lot of you.” He cantered off, Carruthers’s happy laughter ringing in his ears.

* * *

Thea took herself to her bedroom, the only private space she could reliably find in Wellspring’s rambling interior. She needed solitude and a sense of Noah’s presence to recover from Harlan’s disclosure.

Harlot.

She curled up on Noah’s side of the bed, felt the impact of the word physically, felt the biblical enormity of the scorn it embodied. If not for ladies Bransom and Handley, that vile word would have been applied to her.

Should have been, or so she’d thought at the time.

Thea clutched a pillow to her middle, though it was little comfort compared to Noah’s strong arm about her waist.

She’d had years to consider her past, years to watch how little Polite Society did to prepare its daughters for times when no chaperone was on hand. Such moments were inevitable, when even the most protected of young women might dash off to the retiring room between sets to have a hem mended.

Thea was struck anew with how audacious—how desperate—she’d been to accept Noah’s offer of marriage. She’d become his duchess, and Noah’s consequence would be enough to protect Nonie, in even unguarded moments.

For the first time, Thea realized that Noah’s consequence would protect
her
too.

His consequence would protect her, as would Noah himself.

To the extent that she could, Thea would protect Noah as well.

She rolled off the bed, smoothed over the wrinkles on the counterpane, and made her way to the third floor.

Thea approved of Noah raising his illegitimate daughters under his own roof, where they’d be safe and watched over, where they’d learn a sense of their value in the duke’s eyes.

No wonder he summered here, and had Harlan do likewise. Harlan was his heir, for the present, and the girls’ protection would rest on Harlan’s shoulders in Noah’s absence.

Thea made a quick stop in the conservatory, where Erikson assured her he enjoyed the visits from the girls, and was already using the time to bring botanical matters to their notice.