The Accidental Duchess Read online

  “Mostly,” he said, still quietly.

  “But isn’t traveling back and forth on the Continent impossible?” I asked, conscious that I was getting a headache. “Mama is forever moaning about not being able to get good silk or champagne or the latest fashions.”

  “It is difficult, yes, but not impossible given the right motivation,” he replied.

  “I see,” I said. “The question—the question I am not allowed to ask—being, what is the right motivation?”

  He did not reply.

  “So you two have just been switching whenever the mood took you? When I thought I was dancing with you, it could have been him?” I was not certain, even as I asked it, why I so wanted to know. And his continued silence answered for him. “The letters from you, from home,” I demanded. “Were those written by you or Milburn?”

  “Me,” he said, quietly. “Unless there were some I don’t know about.”

  “Unlikely,” I said. “And the one from the Continent with regards to Stinker Boxhurst?”

  “Me,” he said again.

  “I see.” My only love letter, as unsatisfactory as it had been, had been fraudulent. I had consoled myself over the content, at the time, by telling myself that Milburn had gone to a great deal of trouble to get it to me at all, since getting mail dispatched from the Continent to England was no easy feat. I looked at him. “Did you actually go to the trouble of disguising your handwriting, then?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid I did.”

  “What about the time last year that I danced with you at the Rostons’?”

  “Still me.”

  “The time Larsen and I met you in the rain on South Audley Street and you gave us a ride home in your carriage and careened into a milk cart?”

  “Not me,” he said, instantly, and then, tentatively, “Gwen? May I ask you something?”

  I looked at him. He had thus far refused me complete honesty, but would my doing the same gain me anything? Perhaps I could even inspire him with my dedication to revealing the truth and our relationship could proceed hence on honest terms. I squared my shoulders. “Yes, you may, Cambourne,” I said with, I thought, impressive grace.

  “That day? Was he driving the grays?” He closed his eyes. “Tell me that he wasn’t driving the grays.”

  Despite the fact that I could cheerfully have throttled him at the moment, I had to laugh at his expression. “He was driving the grays,” I said.

  He shuddered. “He knows he’s not supposed to drive the grays.”

  I couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that it wasn’t the earth tilting under my feet, after all: it was that it had been a different shape than I had believed all along. I wondered suddenly whether anything I had taken as truth about my world was accurate. “Milburn is alive?” I asked, sharply.

  “As far as I know, Gwen. I fully believe he is.” But it did not escape my notice that he did not look altogether comfortable.

  “This list,” I said, looking at him intently, “of the times I thought it was one of you and it was really the other could go on and on. Am I correct?”

  Cambourne rubbed a hand across his forehead, in a gesture that I was coming to know represented weariness. “I realize this has all been an awful shock, Gwen,” he said, not answering my question, but then, he didn’t really need to. “With one thing piling up on top of another.”

  “I always thought I could tell the difference,” I said. “Always.”

  “You really were very good,” he said, gently. “Although perhaps not as good as we allowed you to believe.”

  “I see,” I said stiffly.

  “You are angry,” he said, very quietly.

  “Yes. And you are annoyingly cryptic—” I stopped. “It is all the deceptions. Not knowing really if Milburn is the man I believed him to be. Or even if my past really belongs to me. Does that sound ridiculous?”

  “No,” he said, taking my hand between his. I hadn’t realized how cold mine had grown until it was ensconced between his two warm ones. “It doesn’t. And I very much wish I didn’t need to play out these games any further. They seemed worth it at one time, but I have lost my taste for them.”

  “Unaccountably,” I said.

  He slid his hand along my cheek. “Not unaccountably at all,” he said, low, bending closer.

  And, oh Lord, the awful part is that I wanted his hand to keep on moving on me. But I almost hated myself for that. “But what the games are, or why they are being played, or why I am a part of them, are yet more questions I’m not allowed to ask?”

  He raised one of those arrogant brows and I could see it as the barriers fell once again into place. “Oh, you’re allowed to ask them, all right, Gwen. God knows you keep doing it and I have not stopped you—” he paused and I knew we were both recalling that kiss—“or not for long, anyway,” he amended. “I just can’t answer.”

  “I see.” I eyed him. “You are allowed to marry me, and try to bed me, then, but not to tell me anything?”

  He bent very close. So close that it was almost as if he were touching me. “I didn’t try to bed you, Gwen,” he said. “If I’d tried, we wouldn’t be sitting here talking right now.”

  I raised a brow back at him. “You’re awfully certain of yourself, aren’t you, Cambourne? For a man married to a woman who is waiting for your brother?” I knew I was sticking my hand dangerously close to the fire, but I was suddenly so angry I didn’t care.

  He held my wrist, not hard, but firmly. “Fifteen minutes in my bed and you’d be lucky to remember my brother’s existence, let alone his name.”

  “Don’t you mean in your brother’s bed?” I asked, as nastily as I could, which was quite.

  He laughed. “It’s the fifteen minutes that matters, not the location.”

  “So that’s the way of it? Is it?” I asked, leaning toward him. “You think you can quiet me by seducing me, do you, Cambourne?” I was working up a fairly good steam, having conveniently not forgot—but well, shall we say, put aside?—the knowledge that I had been sizing up my odds of managing to seduce him for information just a few short minutes ago.

  And he leaned closer, too. So close that I could see the beginning of lines bracketing his mouth, his perfect mouth, as he smiled slowly at me. “They do say the end justifies the means,” he said, low. And then a look of astonishment crossed his face and he let go of my wrist.

  “Now that is one of the most—” I started to say, and then I heard it, also. Unmistakably: my mother’s voice. And right there, on the landing, too, from the sound of things. “Gwen? Oh, Gwennie! Darling!”

  Cambourne got to his feet just as she fairly blew into the room. He bowed to her, and I blinked, my mind moving slowly from the intensity and unreality of the conversation we had just been having to the very real presence of my mother, once again out of her bed well before noon. I could still feel the pressure of his hand on my wrist and his eyes still looked almost black, but with what emotion I could not have said.

  “It is hideous out there. Not at all the sort of day I would have chosen! Most inconvenient,” Mother said, sounding annoyed at her lack of control over the weather. “We were in the area, darlings, at this atrocious hour—as we were on our way to the meeting of the Greater London Suffrage and Reform Society—and thought we would call in.” She managed simultaneously to shoot me a quelling glare and smile at Cambourne. “How lovely to find you à deux!”

  “I shouldn’t read too much into it,” I muttered under my breath. Who was this person masquerading as my mother? And where on earth was the butler, Giddings? “Er, never mind. Was there no one to announce you?” I inquired. “Giddings—”

  She gave me a look to let me know that no mere butler was a match for her. “Giddings is otherwise occupied at the moment. Now, then—”

  “Hul-loo-oo, Almeria!” cried a voice from the foot of the stairs, and I closed my eyes.

  Mother held up a finger to tell us to wait, and then strode out into the corridor. Cambourne�
��s gaze met mine. “Up here, Vi,” she bellowed. “In Gwennie’s chamber. Do join us!”

  “Perhaps we should adjourn to the drawing room,” Cambourne suggested, when she returned. “We can ring for some tea.”

  “No need,” Mother said, arranging herself to best advantage on the tapestried Adam chair. “We shan’t stay above a moment. Don’t want to discommode you newlyweds,” she said archly.

  “Lud!” gasped Violetta, collapsing on the bed. “What a trudge! Why would anyone put their bedchamber up so deuced high?” She glared at me, and then sat, panting, as she recovered from her exertions.

  “Had the designer of the house envisioned it as a public receiving room, he would no doubt have placed it on the ground floor,” I said, pointedly.

  “Good morning, Lady Worth.” Cambourne bowed again.

  “Morning, Milburn,” she said, as coyly as is possible for an overweight woman in a green turban, who is perspiring copiously. She fluttered her eyelashes at him and then reached out, took my half-finished cup of morning chocolate (quite cold by now) from the nightstand and drained it in a gulp. “Ugh,” she said, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. “Vile.” She transferred her glare to me. “Small wonder you’re such a bony chit. A real man likes to be able to grab a nice handful of bottom come a cold night, I can tell you!”

  I was much afraid that she not only could, but would.

  “Well,” Mother said into the uneasy silence. “We came to see how you two go on.”

  “Indeed,” Cambourne replied. His tone was courteous, but something in it sent Violetta’s brow arching toward her turban.

  “And how do you?” she asked.

  “Very well, thank you,” he replied, taking up the seat next to mine, and languidly picking up my hand.

  I resisted the urge to cling to his as though it was a lifeline.

  “How well?” Violetta asked him pointedly.

  “Quite,” he replied, blandly.

  “Well, we really must fly,” Mother said hastily. “And your father has stood outside long enough.”

  “You left Father in the rain?” I asked.

  “Well I instructed him to stand in the drip from the overhang of the roof. The butler is watching to ensure that he does. Your father will ignore my strictures when one gives him the latitude. He is to address the gathering this morning, and we have decided it will garner him a more sympathetic audience if he appears wet and bedraggled. Makes one look more common, you know, and this Society, while influential, is simply packed with people of Whiggish leanings.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I see.”

  “But I hesitate to leave him too long, as it would be inconvenient were he to take a true inflammation of the lungs, as Lord Colchester is coming to dine a week Tuesday. I trust you received my note saying that I am assuming you two shall attend?”

  “Er—” I managed, before Mother continued briskly. “It is high time that you were out and about,” she said. “There is talk already. To be blunt, word that you spent your wedding night apart has got out, and it ill behooves you to have tongues wagging.” And here, it did not escape my notice that she gave Cambourne a significant glance.

  What was afoot between these two? They seemed unlikely allies, to say the least.

  “I think the wisest thing is to scotch any talk by being seen together,” she continued.

  “Thank you for your advice,” Cambourne said, courteously but firmly. “We shall certainly take it into account.” He rose and opened the door.

  Mother stood. “We shall expect you on Tuesday, then,” she said. “Au revoir, darlings.”

  “Still puffed from the way up,” Violetta complained, heaving herself off the bed.

  We listened to them descend the stairs. After a moment, when it seemed safe to assume that they had actually gone, and were not in fact likely to return, we both let out sighs of relief.

  Cambourne turned to me. “Did that really happen? Perhaps we should agree that it did not.”

  “Did what really happen?” I asked.

  He smiled. “I don’t know,” he said. “I seem to have forgot already.” And for a moment it seemed we were in lighthearted agreement, but then he turned serious. “Or I wish I could.”

  I frowned at him. “What do you mean, Cambourne?”

  “Well—” at least he had the good grace to look uncomfortable. “I’d been planning to take you away to Huntsdon for a few weeks—”

  I frowned at him. “Huntsdon?”

  “It’s one of my properties, Gwen,” he said. “In Gloucestershire. I’m overdue for a visit and I thought you’d like it; it’s quite lovely. I thought that we could put it about that Cambourne had lent it to us for a wedding trip.”

  The impact ran through me like a dash of cold water. Gloucestershire. Away from London, away from Cecy and Myrtia, away from the possibility of snooping for more information about Milburn. “Absolutely not,” I told him, crossing my arms. “No Huntsdon. No wedding trip.”

  That eyebrow flew up. “I see,” he said, but I was not convinced that he did.

  “Do you remember that thing you said to me the other night, Cambourne?” I asked. “The one about how I always do what I’m told?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  I crossed my arms. “As of this moment, I no longer do.”

  “You are refusing to come, then, do I take it?” he asked lightly.

  “Yes.” I pulled my arms tighter. “I am.”

  He stood up and walked across the room so that his back was to me. He examined a little clock on the mantel for a moment, and then turned. “Very well,” he said, equably. “I suppose I could insist, but arguing is so tedious. We will stay in London and make our public appearance, then. I suppose that suits my purpose just as well anyway.”

  I frowned. The last thing I had intended was to fall further in line with his plans. Whatever they might be.

  “It’s been permissible for us to have spent this last week more or less in seclusion,” he said. “But your mother is right; now we need to start accepting invitations again if we are to give the appearance of a normal marriage.”

  “But why has the last week of seclusion been acceptable?” I asked, looking at him.

  “A new bride is generally allowed some time to, ah, accustom herself to the … demands of the married state,” he said stiffly.

  “Would it really have taken me a week to recover?” I blurted out, horrified at the notion.

  “No doubt,” he said, his gaze meeting mine. And then he gave me one of those slow smiles of his.

  This time the color flooded my face with such force I almost gasped. Heaven help me, I believed him. “Yes, well, thus far there has been little to recover from,” I said, tartly. “So for now I am to sit, morning after morning, in the drawing room, smiling and greeting guests? In aid of some scheme of yours in which you don’t even have the decency to include me?”

  “Yes,” he said, in cool tones. “Exactly right. You do have a way with words, darling.” And then he walked to the fireplace and drew a stack of invitations off the mantel. He flipped through them for a minute. “We have our choice for our debut, it seems. Is Caro Arbuthnot’s premiere performance of her newly composed masque to your taste?”

  As much as I adored Caro Arbuthnot, it must be clearly stated that in matters musical, her enthusiasm far surpassed her ability. I shuddered. “What else?”

  “We’re not lacking for choices,” he said. “A rout, two balls, a drum, two literary salons, a dinner, a luncheon. Only imagine if it were the Season! Or would you prefer the theater?”

  “The Arbuthnots,” I said with reluctance. At least there would be some entertainment, which would lessen the need to converse with people.

  “Very well. Tomorrow night. I shall plan on it. But for now I am afraid I have some business to attend to.” And then he bowed and left.

  11

  In which we make a list

  “Can you be there?” I asked Cecy and Myrtia later that afternoon. I felt in
desperate need of knowing there would be some friendly faces there.

  “Sorry,” said Cecy, sounding glum. “My mother arrives tomorrow for a visit and it seems I must await her and learn what the latest calamity is. One can only hope it is short in duration, and preferably of a fiscal nature, since that is easily enough solved. Barings is optimistic that if we have on hand a big enough pile of blunt, she might not even stay the night! Have you decided what you will wear tomorrow, Gwen?” She tilted her head. “The shot-green silk evening frock, I think, would be perfect.”

  “Surely you are not serious!” I said, but she looked at me sagely. “Don’t look at me sagely, Cecy,” I said. “I dislike it.”

  She was quiet.

  I was not going to ask her to tell me.

  Definitely not. If she wanted to, she could just come out with it. I would not beg.

  Why, why, why was silence so effective on me?

  “What!?” I burst out. “What is it?”

  Cecy smiled. “It is only that you are no longer supposed to be a virginal young girl,” she said. “You are supposed to know secrets you had not even dreamt of previously. You may now adopt a knowing manner, wear bold colors should you so desire, and flaunt your décolleté. Now, tell us, do you know any secrets you had not even dreamt of previously?”

  “No,” I said, glumly. “Not of any sort. We talked—argued, really—and then my mother and Violetta burst into my bedchamber—”

  “Oh my,” Cecy interrupted. “Did they see anything shocking?”

  “No,” I said, “and, anyway, can you imagine what it would take to shock them?”

  “No.” She shuddered. “I am sorry, Gwen. There is simply nothing for it except to seduce him, preferably allowing him to believe all the while that he is seducing you.”

  “I don’t know,” I said doubtfully.

  “Nothing to it,” she assured me. “All you have to do is to get him gibbering with lust, neatly extract your information, and then brush him aside. I’d suggest you start with the shot-green silk. He’ll stare down at the enticing expanse of your bosom all night until he can stand it no longer and has to rush you home and ravish you. A few judiciously asked questions, and trust me, by the end of the night, you’ll know everything you need to.”