The Duke's Wager (19 page)

“But she is a child, Miss Barrow,” her antagonist said unrelentingly, “and should on some small occasions be allowed to remember it.”

“Your Grace,” Miss Barrow said, quivering, half rising from her chair in affront, and appealing to the only voice of authority in the room. “I do not find this discussion proper in front of your daughter.”

“I am seldom,” the Duke smiled smoothly, putting down his fork, “called upon to arbitrate in matters of vegetables. But now that it is called to mind, I recall that yes, I did prefer those that were soft and smooth and rounded. But then,” he added thoughtfully, “it is, of course, to be remembered that I would prefer any objects so pleasantly defined, even now.”

“Your Grace!” Miss Barrow rose majestically. “I do not have to tolerate such topics of conversation and such vulgar innuendo.”

“Of course you do not,” he answered in bored tones.

“And you will do nothing to stop it?”

“No, nothing,” the Duke answered, casting the outraged governess a level blue look.

“Then I shall have to leave.”

“You must do as you see fit,” he replied.

“I mean, of course,” Miss Barrow announced, casting her last spear, “to leave your employ.”

“That,” the Duke said softly, his daughter’s widened eyes upon him, “is what I assumed you meant.”

*

“And now?” Miss Pickett said, her voice disturbing the quiet in the emptied room.

“And now,” the Duke replied, carefully inspecting an apple that had been left in the bowl upon the table, “I am bereft of a governess for my poor child, and all due to your vicious tongue, Pickett.” He shook his head slowly and regretfully. Miss Barrow had left with a gasp, Lady Lucinda had been sent to bed after a sweet and calm chat with Miss Pickett, and the Duke had waved away the footmen after they had cleared the remnants of the uneaten meal. The fire crackled quietly in the fireplace, and the candles guttered in their silver sockets.

“That you, of all people, should bring me to this, Pickett,” the Duke sighed.

“Of course, it was wonderful how you engineered it, Jason,” Miss Pickett said slowly. “And quite like the boy I knew. You knew, of course, what the sight of the stick that prig Barrow was converting that poor child into would do to me, and you knew my reckless tongue. And, of course, you knew to a nicety, what her reaction would be, as you always seem to know what people’s reactions will be.”

“I am a knowing one,” the Duke answered somberly, carving a small round disk from the apple. “Although ‘nicety’ is seldom a term applied to me.”

“Of course, you did know how to entrap me, but wouldn’t it have been simpler to simply dismiss her and ask me?”

“But simpler may not have been as effective, and there was the merest possibility that you might have refused,” he replied reasonably.

“I would have,” she said sadly. “I am too old, Jason.”

“You, too old?” he said, his eyes widening. “Oh never, Pickett, you never were, you never will be.”

And he remembered all the years before he had been sent away for his education, all the years when her vigilance had protected him, those early years when she would plan walks and tours and rambles, to keep him from the house when his mother was entertaining her “guests,” her “gentlemen callers.” All the years of her unceasing efforts in his behalf, her attempts to turn a slight, almost too beautiful and sensitive boy child into a responsible sturdy man. How she had introduced him to the groom, and the stablemen, and the boys who worked about the house, so that he could learn the art of fisticuffs, so that he could learn the world of men. Of how she had toughened herself, had cultivated her astringent personality. She had hidden her concern for his bruises, both physical and mental, so that she would not smother him, cosset him, soften him, and all so that he could grow strong enough to face the realities she had so successfully hidden from him until that day he had escaped her notice and burst in upon his mother at her sport. “You too old Pickett?” he laughed. “When there is a need for you?”

“Too devious though, Jason,” she sighed. “Oh I’ll do it, of course, I’ll raise her as best I’m able, but you did not used to be so devious.”

“But it comes so naturally, I must have always been so, my dear, it just escaped your doting eye.”

“Not quite so devious,” she insisted, and then looking at him there, his legs stretched out, the apple and the knife held in his careful white fingers, his attention carefully focused on them, she blurted, “And all those other tales I have heard. Yes, I took care to try to hear about your exploits. Those tales, are they true?”

He did not look up from the apple, but only drawled in his fogged whisper, “Now which tales could you be referring to? There are so many. And rumor adds long tails to short ones. Ah well, for reasons of propriety, I cannot possibly go into them all. As well as for reasons of time, for although the night is yet young, it might take us till tomorrow to be done with them all. Suffice it then to say, yes, half of them, whatever ones you heard, are quite true.”

“Half of them is too much, Jason,” she said sternly.

“Send me early to bed, will you?” he smiled, looking at her now with that sweet smile that first won her when she had seen him all those years ago. There was such a melting power in that smile then, she thought, and even more now, no wonder he can go his way unchecked.

“Too much, Jason,” she sorrowed. “I did not point you that direction.”

“The bitch whelps true, Pickett,” he said with a fleeting expression almost like a snarl. “I am my mother’s child.”

“And you court her end?” Pickett’s voice rang out.

“Oh let be, my love. I live my life, I am well content, I harm no one but myself.” He rose and walked the length of the table, stopping only to inspect the centerpiece with unseeing eyes. The silence grew in the room, and he absently shaped the candlewax with a stroking finger. “At least as yet,” he whispered absently. “At least I think I have harmed no one else as yet. No, all were willing, all are willing to lead the merry Duke a merry dance for a pretty price. And if I prefer the dance, Pickett, what of it? I have been a wallflower. I have had connubial bliss. I am not suited to it, let me to my pleasures.”

“And are they pleasures, Jason?” she asked, unrelenting.

“You put me to the blush, my love. At least I find them so. And others have assured me of it. At least,” he qualified again, “as yet, they have.”

“But not all?” she persisted. “Is there another person you are involved with now? You sound not as sure as a merry Duke should be. And this sudden visit to Grace Hall, this sudden concern for the child, is there a reason?”

For a moment in the dimness of the room, the years fled away for both of them, the old, anxious woman perched upon her chair watching the slim, fair impeccable man. For a moment, he hesitated, as if to talk again, without artifice, without concealment, to another being. But then a log cracked in the fire and the moment passed. He straightened.

“Another person?” he said quizzically. “Oh how full of tact you are my quaint Pickett. ‘Another person,’ so all the tales have reached you after all? But you hope that the ‘person’ is a female one, and a pure, honest, well-bred one at that, for somewhere in that reasonable breast lurks the unreasonable belief that your nursling will be saved by the love of a good woman.”

She knew the moment had passed, and so she retorted, “Nonsense, arrant nonsense, Jason. The love of a good woman would roll off your back like water off a duck’s. I make no doubt you’ve enjoyed the love of a good many women and some of them good women at that, but that would not change you in the least.”

“So glad,” he bowed, “to see you have not lost your senses, or have been spending your retirement wallowing through reams of bad romances.”

“But,” she said succinctly as she rose to leave, “the love
for
a good woman…ah that, my lad, would make all the difference in the world.”

“As ever,” he said half to her retreating back, half to the candle he had sculpted, “you have an acid tongue, and a way with words, my dear, a remarkable way with words.”

* * *

The moonlight drenched the room, and he lay there, on the great bed, silently. As well try to sleep in the glare of noon, he thought, but he did not rise to drape the windows, for he could never bear to sleep in pitch dark, never bear to lock out the moonlight. There will be dark enough in the tomb, he thought, no need to simulate it now. But he could not sleep, and blamed the moonlight, until he realized that while every muscle in his body yearned for sleep, no part of his brain would have any part of it. So he lay there, wide-eyed, seeing the shapes of the room, the edges of the great canopy, above him, much, he thought as it must have looked to his parents the night he was conceived, and to his grandfather the night his father was conceived. And doubtless, he thought wryly, so had his late wife studied the canopy intently the night that poor little wretch was conceived, in fact he remembered her unblinking gaze quite well.

He had dismissed his valet early, and the only concession he had made to sleep was in having had his boots removed, for he lay there on the coverlet, fully clothed. It was as if he awaited his departure in the morning with such eagerness that he did not even wish to bother with the convention of undressing, preparing for sleep, rising and re-dressing, as if all of that was just an unnecessary delaying tactic. Not for the first time he wished he could be at a place just by the wishing of it, without the bother of everyday mechanics to convey him. This visit to my childhood, he thought wearily, has made me as a child again, with a child’s fancies.

While his body lay tense, yet inert, his mind ranged far. At least the child has Pickett now, he thought, and Pickett has another crusade to enliven her. Not the sheltering of a boy from a licentious mama, but the sheltering of a girl from a profligate papa. What cycles dear Pickett has seen, he thought, laughing lightly in the semidark. And so I have resolved all here, he thought, knowing that he had done very little, knowing once again that he had again only arranged things to his own comfort.

Comfort, he thought lazily, ah that would be a good thing. The thing of it is that I am unused to celibacy. In fact, I cannot sleep without my strange comforts. It is that, of course, and the damned moonlight that keeps me lying here, stark staring awake while the rest of the household snores the roofbeams off. Some round, light, laughing thing here in my bed with me would ensure eventual sleep. But no, I am the model papa, as stern and pure and self-denying as a picture upon the wall, and thank God I will be off in the morning and about my pleasures once again.

And when he thought of his present pleasures, and when the image of that pale, green-eyed face swung before him, and the image of that white neck, and the breath that caused the high breasts to rise and fall, and the remembrance of that light step, and the recollection of that breathless little nervous laugh she gave when he shocked her, came, he rose from the bed and roamed the room thinking that such thoughts did not serve him well when he lay sleepless in an empty sacrificial thankless bed. But not empty for long, he thought, for I will have her, and that is becoming more important to me with every empty night I spend. For somehow she had killed his desire for others. And, confused, he accepted his continence and, uncharacteristically, refused to analyze it. Unable to change it, he had decided it was a clever and conscious decision on his part. He applauded his decision not to settle for substitutes at this stage, deeming it rather like a man refusing to gorge on sweets before a gourmet dinner. He had no desire to take the edge off his appetite, he reasoned.

Ah those appetites, he thought, holding his head in his hands as he sat on the edge of the bed. Appetites for shapes and textures of pleasures that seemed both never-ending in their sequences and curiously less satisfying with each encounter. But there was this aura about her, he insisted to himself, that did not seem only to spring from his habit of imbuing each new one with imagined attributes to whet his tastes. There was that in her which he would not have made up, that which he would not, left on his own, have imagined. That curious moral rectitude, that gallant and naive assumption that there was such a thing in her world as honor, as fair play. What had she said that curious night in the coach, she would not sell herself, would he?

What a shock that had been. It was as unexpected to him as roaming through a pleasant field of flowers and gathering one with a wasp inside. It’s true he had gone too far. He knew that, but each time in the past when he had thought he’d gone too far, even he himself had thought so, Society had only clucked and shrugged and looked the other way. And what was the difference, he had thought, between this abduction and that other? That giggling little serving girl that he had accosted in the hall at a friend’s house that cold winter’s night. That…Emily, yes, Emily Ketchum, had been her name. The one with the provocative birthmark near her delightful lips. “Come live with me and be my love,” he had breathed in her ear, half flown with good wine, as she had helped him on with his cloak. And she had simpered and a calculating look had come into her eye and she had lain her little hands on his chest and pouted, “But how? Your Grace, oh the mistress would skin me, and my mother, oh she’d tan me if I up and went off with you.”

“Shall I abduct you then, my heart?” he had suggested, tasting her earlobe and liking the flavor. “Oh yes, sir!” she had assented quickly. And he had laughed, and laughingly brought the coach to the back door, and stifled with laughter, doubled with laughter, carried her giggling, wrapped in his cloak, out into the night. And she had fared well when he grew tired of her, in comfortable keeping even now to an acquaintance of his.