The Duke's Downfall (8 page)

When Lady Clymore uncovered her eyes, she saw Betsy warming her hands at the hearth, Boru stretched on the rug, and her majordomo holding a box and waiting in the doorway to be acknowledged. “Yes, Iddings?”

“The Duke of Braxton’s coat, my lady, sponged and pressed as you requested.”

“Excellent.” The dowager rose from the settee with her spectacles in hand and moved to her writing table. “I shall just pen a note, then you may send it by footman to the residence of the dowager duchess in Bond Street.”

While her grandmother seated herself and inked a quill, Betsy lifted her gaze from the fire screen to Iddings. Gratitude shimmered in her eyes as she mouthed the words, “Thank you.” Touched by her kindness and the unexpected acknowledgement, Iddings gave her a bow and a smile, then hastily resumed an impassive countenance as Lady Clymore bent one elbow on the back of her chair.

“A brief line of thanks from you would be neither untoward nor misconstrued, I think,” she said to her granddaughter.

The stern look she offered along with the curved goose feather gave Betsy no choice. Reluctantly she moved to the writing table and took the quill and the chair from her grandmother.

“Keep in mind that you are writing to a duke of the realm.”

A very learned duke if what Teddy had told her of his oldest brother could be trusted. Smiling, Betsy dipped the quill in a silver well, wrote two flourishing lines in Latin and her name beneath her grandmother’s cramped signature.

“What does this say?” Lady Clymore snatched the paper from the table and peered at it through her spectacles.

“That I am most grateful to His Grace for his kind assistance,” Betsy lied, with her very best and most guileless expression, “and that I shall humbly endeavor never to trouble him again.

The dowager looked pointedly down her nose as she returned the note to her granddaughter to be sanded and sealed. “Which of course you shall not.”

That much at least Betsy could guarantee, for what she’d written to His Grace was that he possessed the manners of a goat, and if he did not keep to his word as a gentleman to henceforth ignore her very existence she would never release Teddy from her snare. A far cry from calling him out, but it would do.

“Here you are, Iddings.” The countess took the finished note from Betsy and held it out to the butler as he crossed the room to take it. “Kindly send George to collect Boru for his exercise. I believe it best that he be absent during morning calls.”

“Yes, my lady.” Iddings tucked the note inside the box, bowed, and took his leave.

Slapping the flat of her hand on the table, Betsy wheeled to her feet to face her grandmother. “Must you banish Boru at every turn?”

“So long as he continues to be a menace, yes.”

Lady Clymore snatched off her spectacles and shook them emphatically at Betsy. “Don’t think me a blind or easily gulled old fool, my gel. If not for Iddings, my dear little shepherdess—” Her spectacles froze in midwag and her eyes widened with realization and alarm. “Iddings!” she cried, rushing past Betsy. “Bring that box to me at once!”

The dowager turned sharply through the doorway to the left, her shawl billowing behind her like a sail. Betsy threw a panicked glance at Boru, lying on the hearth rug with his ears pricked and his head cocked curiously.

“I’m in the sauce now for sure,” she told him, then hiked up her skirts and bolted for the door, reaching it in time to see the fringed hem of her grandmother’s shawl disappear around the turn at the head of the passageway that led to the foyer.

“Iddings! Do not open that door!”

Envisioning the countess throwing herself bodily on the butler to prevent delivery of the box and the note, Betsy charged after her, unaware that Boru loped behind her and that George had burst through the kitchen door at the far end of the passageway. Alarmed by the dowager’s screech, the sight of Betsy’s raised skirts and flashing ankles was all the provocation the footman needed to follow at a run.

Where the passageway ended, so did the thick gold runner. Forced to slow her pace or fall on the gleaming marble, Betsy lowered her skirts and grasped the curved wall of the archway to break her momentum. If Boru hadn’t misjudged the footing she might have managed a breathless but ladylike appearance in the mouth of the foyer. But just as she swung herself into the open, Boru’s front paws hit the highly polished floor and shot out from under him.

He careened off the wall with a yelp and smacked squarely into Betsy. Her feet and her skirts flew up and she fell with a shriek, mostly on top of Boru. Grasping handfuls of his shaggy coat, she hung on for dear life as they went sliding across the foyer, her eyes tightly closed, until they spun to a stop against a pair of sturdy legs.

The jolt snapped Betsy’s head back and opened her eyes to the upside-down faces of Iddings and her grandmother. Their stricken, glassy-eyed expressions reminded Betsy of jack-o’-lantern grins—and sent a chill up her back as she realized they were not looking at her.

Several curls loosened from the stylish knot pinned to her crown tumbled over her eyes as Betsy lowered her head, but she had no trouble recognizing the gilt-haired man framed in the open doorway in front of her. “Julian!”

“Elizabeth,” the Earl of Clymore replied, his voice as chilly as the sunlight filtering past him into the foyer. “Your life is in chaos as usual, I see.”

With difficulty, Betsy stifled an angry retort. Though it hardly seemed possible, Julian was even higher in the instep than he’d been when last they’d met at Clymore. He stood looking down at her, not at her face, but at her very shapely and very exposed legs.

There was no admiration in his gaze, only disapproval, still Betsy hurriedly tucked up her knees and pulled down her skirts, uncovering Boru to Julian—and Julian to Boru. Man and hound stared at each other, startled and unblinking, until Boru shook himself free of her petticoats and lunged with a growl and bared fangs.

“Boru, no!” Betsy grasped his collar and pulled with all her might, but she was no match for the hound’s great strength.

If George hadn’t clamped his thick, muscled hands on either side of her and pulled Boru back, the Earl of Clymore would have been his midday meal. His fangs snapped shut on thin air rather than Julian’s right knee, and Betsy went limp with relief.

So did the earl. So limp and so pale that he might’ve swooned, Betsy thought, if her grandmother hadn’t stepped quickly forward to thump him on the back as George hauled the still snarling dog a safe distance away.

“Betsy has been training Boru to guard the house,” Lady Clymore told him cheerfully. “Capital job, don’t you think?”

The dowager’s amazing defense of Boru brought Betsy to her feet—and the color flooding back to Julian’s face. “More likely,” he said darkly, his pale blue eyes narrowing with fury as they settled on Boru, “a capital job of trying to kill me.”

In George’s strong hands, Boru had stopped snarling and merely stared balefully at Julian. Arrogant and insufferable as he was, he was still the Earl of Clymore. A word from him, and Boru would suffer a fate worse than banishment.

And so would Julian, Betsy vowed, as she forced a gay laugh. “Don’t be silly,” she said, slipping her arm through his to draw him away from the door so Iddings could close it. “Why on earth would I do such a thing?”

“I can think of several reasons,” Lady Clymore muttered, ducking her chin to fuss with her shawl.

“I beg your pardon, my lady?” Julian’s gaze shifted from Boru to the dowager countess. His voice was mild, but his eyes had narrowed another fraction.

“I said we did not expect to see you in town for the Little Season.” Her ladyship raised her chin and one eyebrow imperiously. “In fact, I believe I had your word that we would not.”

“I have urgent business in the city,” the earl replied, just as imperiously, as he gave his beaver hat and walking stick to Iddings. “To do so without calling upon you would be most rude.”

“Indeed.” Lady Clymore’s brow arched higher.

“T’would also make it devilish difficult to ascertain our doings.”

Julian laid a hand on his chest, carefully, so as not to disturb the intricate folds of his neckcloth. “You misjudge me, my lady.”

“I think not,” the countess snapped. “Iddings, we shall take tea in the Blue Saloon. Betsy, change your gown and join us there at once."

“Yes, my lady,” the butler replied, with a bow.

“Yes, Granmama,” Betsy replied, with a curtsey.

 Once the paneled mahogany doors of the adjacent Blue Saloon had closed behind her grandmother and Julian, Betsy spun on her heel to face Iddings and George. The butler and the footman had both come to her aid once this day. Fervently she hoped they would again.

“I should like to be shed of my upstart cousin as soon as possible,” she told them. “Will you help me?”

Iddings and George glanced at each other, then bowed in unison. “We would be honored, my lady,” the butler replied.

“Thank you.” Betsy gave them a grateful smile, then dropped to her heels to inquire of Boru, “And you, my darling?”

The hound whined and wiggled and licked her chin. Betsy hugged him, then rose to her feet, and said in a low voice to her conspirators, “This is what I want you to do . . .”

Chapter Eight

The Blue Saloon not only looked but smelled like the gardens at Clymore at their peak of fullest bloom. When Betsy made her entrance gowned in pink muslin trimmed with lace, the expression on Julian’s face told her that he, too, was at his pique. Laughter bubbled in her throat at the pun, but she suppressed it as her cousin turned to face her.

“It would appear,” he said, glancing ruefully at a towering arrangement of gladioli, “that you are something of a success.”

“You seem surprised, my lord.”

 “I must own that I am.”

“A gauche but honest confession,” Betsy observed boldly, as she sat beside her grandmother on a striped satin settee. “As it happens, impetuousness and ramshackle behavior are all the rage just now.”

“Amazing,” Julian muttered, judging that the score of bouquets filling the saloon nearly equaled the number of dun letters he’d received from his creditors.

“How do you account for it, my lord? Do you suppose other members of the ton possess characters as flawed as my own? At our last meeting, you put forth the theory that such qualities are an unfortunate but natural outgrowth of being born to wealth and privilege. Do you still hold to that position? Or have you revised your opinion that such traits will ensure my failure in Society?”

Too late, as the upstart Earl of Clymore spun toward her, Lady Clymore trod on Betsy’s foot. Anger glittered in his eyes, but Betsy held his gaze and her chin high.

Mistaking her impudence for defiance—when, in fact, it was nothing more than bravado born of her supreme confidence in Iddings and George—Julian further misjudged Betsy’s plainspeaking to be as calculated as Lady Clymore’ s insistence that they take tea among these nauseatingly fragrant testimonies to her granddaughter’s success. A careful orchestration, it appeared to him, designed to humiliate and belittle him.

He’d planned his visit intentionally early, hoping to find Betsy and the countess still at breakfast, which he would have had they kept town hours. He’d expected to be invited to join them, to be fawned and fussed over, to be greeted and treated with respect as the Earl of Clymore.

Instead, he’d been attacked and relegated to this mock orangery like the merest of social acquaintances. It was galling. He’d given his kinswomen ample time to adjust to his new status and accept their fate. That his own hinged on their wealth and marriage to Betsy was but another bitter pill, for he had no particular affection for his cousin.

And no time to woo another heiress. He’d been a fool, Julian realized, to let Lady Clymore wring the Christmas promise from him. An overconfident fool, which Betsy certainly was if she thought for an instant he would allow her to marry elsewhere. Her treatment of him made it clear that she still considered herself above his touch. If she would not grant him his due as the Earl of Clymore, Julian decided vengefully, then he would take it.

“Have you received anything other than flowers?” he asked, seating himself opposite Betsy on a matching settee.

“Some chocolates, a few sonnets,” she replied modestly.

“You mistake my meaning. Deliberately, I think. Have you received any offers of marriage?”

“Such things,” Lady Clymore responded tartly, “are not discussed in company.”

“But we are family,” Julian reminded her. “Somewhat distant, but family nonetheless. I merely wish to ascertain if I need to make myself available while in town to receive petitioners for Elizabeth’s hand.”

“You overstep yourself,” the countess warned. “That duty is mine exclusively. I have your word, if you recall.”

“I do, my lady, and assure you I have no intention of reneging.” Julian laced his fingers together on his crossed knees. “But surely you see the problem?”

Lady Clymore glared down her nose at him, her eyes simmering. “I believe I am looking at it.”

“Precisely.” Julian nodded, well pleased with how easily the countess had taken his bait. “So long as I am in town, any gentleman who wishes to offer for Elizabeth will naturally seek me out as head of the family rather than yourself. It will be up to me to say yea or nay.”

Lady Clymore paled. Julian smiled watching the disdain fade from her eyes. Satisfied that at last he’d put the old termagant in her place, he glanced at Betsy, expecting to see a similarly shocked and glazed expression on her face. Instead, he saw the scorn his pronouncement had drained from her grandmother glittering coldly in her eyes.

“That is easily solved, Julian. You need only refer anyone who asks to Granmama.”

“Surely you know I cannot.”

“You mean you will not.”

A knock at the saloon doors saved Julian from a reply. At Lady Clymore’s acknowledgement, Iddings, shed of his apron and suitably rigged in his formal black coat, entered with the tea tray. As he placed it on the small table between the two settees, his gaze met Betsy’s obliquely and inquiringly. She responded with a barely perceptible nod.