The Duke's Downfall (6 page)

“Seems a pretty thin broth for scandal, Chas.”

“It wouldn’t be in town.” He frowned and let his hand fall away from his face. “Fortunately Caro loves the country, so she can blather it about the village till she turns blue, or until Lesley and Amanda are wed and I can return to the hall and put a stop to it.” The duke’s gaze drifted toward the library windows, a perverse smile darkening his features. “Whichever comes first.”

“Then it would probably be best,” Teddy said soberly, “if I postpone my trip to Gretna until after the wedding.”

“Ummm, yes,” Charles agreed absently, lifting one hand to rub his chin. “I would if I were you.”

“All right, then.” Teddy got to his feet. “I’m off to study my Latin. Good day, Chas.”

“Ummm,” Charles repeated, still rubbing his chin.

Intent on putting as much distance as possible between them, Teddy heeled quickly about and made for the door. He was no more than three steps shy of it when comprehension dawned, and Charles roared, “Gretna! I forbid it!”

Teddy turned and faced the Duke of Braxton, red-faced and on his feet behind his desk. “That’s exactly what Mother said last night when I offered for Betsy.”

“I should hope so!” Charles came swiftly around the desk. He opened his mouth to shout something else, but instead he blinked puzzledly and asked, “Betsy who?”

“Lady Elizabeth Keaton,” Teddy said, sighing her name rapturously. “The goddess Aphrodite.”

Otherwise known as the mistress of the hound from hell.

Though Charles hadn’t turned so much as a single thought toward Betsy since the Oxford Street fiasco, her face leapt into his mind with a clarity that alarmed him almost as much as it horrified him. He hadn’t realized he’d remembered her name, the vivid blue of her eyes, the sheen of her hair— or the dangerous streak in her nature until now.

“Ah, yes.” Charles smiled and folded his arms. “You mentioned her last evening. ‘A Beauty and an Original,’ I believe you said.” A Menace and Bedlamite, he added grimly to himself.

“She’s wonderful, Chas. Truly wonderful. D’you know, she said I should finish school before I even think about marriage?” Teddy beamed angelically. “You must meet her. Say you will.”

“Oh, I intend to,” Charles assured him fiercely. “Just as soon as you give me her direction, and your solemn word that you’ll go no farther with this demented plan for elopement until I do.”

“If I could, of course I would, but it’s quite impossible. Julian Dameron is due in town next week.”

“Who the devil is Julian Dameron?” Charles demanded, managing, but just barely, not to shout.

“Betsy’s cousin, the Earl of Clymore. Hasn’t a feather to fly with, so he’s determined to have Betsy and her portion. It’s why she’s come to London, you see, to escape him—but he’s reneged on his agreement not to follow.”

“She’s come to town, you clunch,” Charles retorted bluntly, “for the same reason every young miss comes—to find herself a husband!”

“Not Betsy. She doesn’t wish to marry anyone. She has the perfect plan to avoid Dameron, though she wouldn’t tell me what it is.”

“Of course she wouldn’t, you chuckle-head!” Charles all but bellowed. “For you are the plan!”

“Then why did she refuse my offer?”

“Because she’s a cunning little chit, and you are greener than grass if you cannot see it!”

“You are wrong, Chas. You only think so because Lady Cromley has played you false.”

“This has nothing to do with—” Charles caught himself in midshout, took a deep breath to calm himself, and went on, a muscle leaping in his .jaw. “It may seem to you that I am painting Lady Elizbeth with the same brush, but that, too, is due to your lack of age and experience.

“So, unless you wish to be locked in your room with a Latin tutor until you reach your majority, you will give me your word that you have abandoned all thought of marrying anyone—especially Lady Elizabeth Keaton—over the anvil.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Chas,” Teddy complained bitterly, clenching his fists for dramatic effect, “but you have my word.”

“Very well, then.” Charles gave him a stiff nod of dismissal. “You have my leave to go.”

Teddy took it and went, but only as far as the corridor outside the library. There, as he pulled the door shut behind him, he peered through the crack and saw Charles distractedly pacing the room, one hand on his hip, the other raking repeatedly through his hair.

“No desire to be a duchess,” he muttered under his breath. “No wish to wed anyone, indeed!”

“Oh, Chas?” Teddy pushed the door inward a bit and leaned his head inside the library. “I’ve recalled another remark I heard Lady Crom—”

“Not now, halfling,” Charles cut him off. “One scheming female at a time.”

“As you wish,” he murmured, and eased the door shut.

Grinning gleefully, Teddy took himself up to his room and the Latin grammar waiting for him on the writing table before the windows. With a pen knife drawn from his pocket, he peeled away the stiff backing on the inside cover, withdrew a sheet of Charles’s crested stationery filched from his desk in the library at Braxton Hall, then carefully resealed his hiding place, and laid the book aside.

“My dearest Caro,” he murmured ardently, still grinning as he dipped his pen in the well and sat down to write.

His imitation of Charles’s sketchy script was flawless, made perfect by years of forging replies to notes intercepted from his masters. The key was haste, for the Duke of Braxton’s thoughts always outpaced his hand. Scarce a minute and three quarters later, the seconds ticked off by the pocket watch inscribed to him by Charles on his last birthday, which lay on the table beside him, the note was penned, sanded, and secreted in his pocket.

Recalling the smash of Charles’s fist against the desk, Teddy suffered a momentary qualm of doubt as he pictured a fiery-eyed and furious Duke of Braxton swooping down unaware on the lovely Lady Betsy. Only once before, when the solution to a mathematical equation had eluded him for several days, had he ever seen Charles so angry.

But a storm was sometimes necessary, Teddy reasoned, to lift a becalmed ship from the doldrums. And Lady Elizabeth Keaton was, he felt sure, the perfect tempest, her wit and resolve equal to Charles at his most formidable.

Should all else fail, though Teddy didn’t think for an instant it would, there was her wonderful reticule full of oddments, one or two of which she’d shown him the night before. The memory brought a wickedly happy smile to his face as he pocketed his watch, fixed the fob to his waistcoat, and went out to post the note inviting Lady Cromley to London.

Chapter Six

Unaccustomed as he was to evening dress, Charles was quite accustomed to being stared at upon entering a room. So accustomed, in fact, that he scarcely noticed the sudden glare in Lady Pinchon’s ballroom caused by the dozens of quizzing glasses lifted surprisedly in his direction.

Nor did he sense the faint stir of air. Had he noticed the doors leading to the garden were shut against the evening chill, he might have guessed the reason—the plethora of fans snapped suddenly open by madly whispering dowagers—but he did not, for he was intent only on locating Lady Elizabeth Keaton, putting paid to her designs on Teddy, and getting the blazes out of here as quickly as possible.

By the thinness of the crowd he judged it would not take long, which suited his eardrums as well as his purpose. The walls were fairly vibrating with the loudness of the music, for Lady Pinchon was nearly as deaf as the marble columns supporting the ceiling. Already the fortissimo country dance was giving him a headache, but Charles set his jaw against it and moved out of the doorway.

So far this was the third Society affair he’d graced in search of Lady Elizabeth. She and her grandmother had managed to stay at least a quarter of an hour ahead of him and the dozen or so pinks of the ton who’d been in hot pursuit of her all evening.

There’d been near collisions and neck-and-neck races from one establishment to the next, which Fletcher had kept them out of at Charles's  insistence. Not because it was unseemly for a duke, but because the temptation of the chase set his blood singing dangerously. Emotion never solves anything, he’d told Fletcher, only logic and reason.

Both of which threatened to fail Charles as he caught sight of his quarry, already run aground by the pack of young bucks he’d been trailing all evening. Scheming chit, he thought darkly, helping himself to a glass of champagne offered by a passing footman. She tipped back her head to laugh at some amusing remark as he watched her, the gleam of the chandeliers winking in the facets of the small diamond choker circling her throat. She’d hooked her fish, yet she was still casting lures.

Or so it seemed to Charles, while Betsy was enjoying herself immensely. Thanks to the bits of lamb’s wool she’d brought along in her small evening reticule and stuffed in her ears to save them from the overloud music, she couldn’t hear a single syllable uttered by her noisome suitors. Hopefully, since her plan to evade them by whisking herself and her grandmother from one engagement to the next hadn’t worked, she was laughing at the most inappropriate comments and convincing them she was a total shatterbrain.

Rash young fools, Charles thought scornfully of the gallants surrounding Betsy. To go haring off after a pretty face, to risk life and cattle to bask in the glow of a dazzling smile, to be the first to lead a Beauty out for a waltz ... to be two and thirty and never have done any of those things.

The thought leapt unbidden into his head, with such ferocity that the stem of the goblet in his hand snapped cleanly in two. Champagne spilled over his fingers and he blinked at them, stunned, then looked hastily up in search of a footman, only to lock his gaze with Lady Elizabeth’s, just as she laughingly tossed her head in his direction.

She froze, but only for a heartbeat, long enough for her eyes to take a startled leap from his face to the shattered goblet in his hand. Then her lashes swept down and she turned away. Still laughing, Charles noted, feeling gauche and ridiculously angry.

Murmuring apologies, a footman appeared and took the shards. Irritably Charles pulled out his handkerchief to wipe his hand and wondered what the devil was wrong with him. The champagne, he decided. He was hardly foxed, yet he’d drunk more this evening than he had in the past six months. All in pursuit of the scheming little minx who had the audacity to laugh at him.

But she was not alone, Charles realized, intercepting several sidelong glances aimed in his direction. He returned them disdainfully, and noticed that like Lady Pinchon, most of her guests were well advanced in years. Were they sniggering at His Dottiness, he wondered sourly, or His Dodderingness?

Never mind that the nickname existed only in Teddy’s head, it rankled. Nearly as much as the realization that he shouldn’t have come, that what he had to say was best said in private, perhaps even to the dowager countess rather than her granddaughter. He’d reacted rashly, without thought, purely from emotion. He’d fallen victim to temptation, not champagne.

But it occurred to Charles, as he watched Lady Elizabeth open her fan, that he could trap her with her own snare. Acting rashly again, and quite forgetting his mother’s caution that he was not as clever as he thought, Charles gave his waistcoat a tug, squared his unpadded shoulders, and stepped boldly forward to join the hunt.

Having kept the Duke of Braxton in wary view since the flash of breaking glass had caught her attention, Betsy saw him approach her grandmother and felt her pulse quicken. He’d not forgotten her, that much was clear from the unnerving stare he’d kept trained upon her for the last several minutes. The intensity of his gaze had made her shiver and turn away, yet she’d remained aware of his unwavering attention. Had he come seeking restitution for the incident in Oxford Street? Or satisfaction?

Much as she despised Julian, Betsy had no wish to see him shot or run through by the Duke of Braxton. If she could escape him no other way, she’d wield the pistol or rapier herself, thank you very much. Not that it hadn’t been kind of her new young friend Teddy to offer, but—

A gasp of recognition caught in Betsy’s throat as she watched the duke bow over her grandmother’s hand and turn to face her. Braxton’s eyes were more blue than green, but the thick dark hair gleaming like a raven’s wing in the candlelight, his straight nose, and square jaw were the same as Teddy’s. Were they cousins or brothers? Betsy wondered, sinking quickly into a curtsey as the duke approached and her suitors gave way.

“Good evening, Your Grace,” Betsy murmured, rising as he completed his bow to her.

“Lady Elizabeth,” he said, offering his elbow. “Your grandmother has given me permission for this waltz.”

At least that’s what Betsy thought he said, for she couldn’t quite hear him, but his proffered arm and a hasty glance at her grandmother’s beaming face seemed to confirm it. Her pulse quickening, Betsy laid her hand on the Duke of Braxton’s wrist. It was trepidation, she told herself, not excitement at being led onto the dance floor by the youngest, handsomest duke in the realm.

“So, my lady,” Charles began, once he had the little conniver firmly in his grasp. “Are you enjoying London?”

“Oh, yes, Your Grace,” Betsy returned, striving vainly to hear him. He’d said London, she thought.

“Have you made many conquests?” Charles asked blandly.

Was that something about the country? Did she prefer it to the city? “Oh, no, Your Grace.” Betsy smiled dazzlingly, wishing fervently she could make out what he was saying.

“Really?” Charles queried mildly. The little baggage, he thought contemptuously. “You seemed quite surrounded just now.”

Had he said round or ground? Betsy cast a frantic look about her for a clue and saw nothing rounder than the plump pink cherubs painted on the frescoed ceiling. Surely not, she thought, flushing to the roots of her hair.

She colored most becomingly, Charles owned, but cynically. Certain now that he was near to cracking her facade, he pressed bitingly, “How well are you acquainted with my brother, my lady?”