The Accidental Duchess Read online

  “Cambourne!” said Richard, a moment too late, as usual. “Your brother-in-law!”

  “Indeed. I am aware of the relationship,” I murmured as I took in the little tableau before me. And tried to clench my hands into fists to stop the shaking. My husband was rather cozily, as it turned out, engaged in falling down the excessively large cleavage of none other than Mathilde Claussen. How intime the two of them looked! As I watched, she laughed at something he said, and lazily waved her fan. One glossy copper ringlet hung over her smooth white shoulder. He was leaning awfully close. Any closer, in fact, and he might just fall right down into that valley and we’d have to send a rescue party. If, that is, he even wanted to be rescued, which I took leave to doubt.

  Fury began to curl through me, joining the jealousy that was already there. I hated him, I decided. And her. And, come to think of it, Milburn, too. My gloved hands were still curled into tight little fists. I knew I should laugh and say something gay or witty to Richard, and pretend not to have noticed them, but I simply could not tear my eyes away.

  Then Cambourne looked up, and our gazes collided with what I thought might very well have been an audible thump. I know the roar of conversation around me seemed to fade to my ears. His lazy smile was gone, on the instant, as though it had never been. He looked extremely grim, in fact. My heart was thundering in my chest and I was simultaneously shivering and noticing that my palms were sweating inside my gloves.

  “Gwen! Gwen?” Richard was saying.

  Cambourne had managed to tear himself away from Mrs. Claussen and her bosom and was making his way easily across the room toward us. Myrtia, too, had spied us and no doubt having taken note of my distress, was heading in our direction. She was not having the same success as Cambourne in parting the crowd, and people kept stopping her to chat, so it seemed I would have to greet Cambourne on my own. Or, well, with Richard, which I considered pretty much on my own. I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin.

  “Gwen!”

  I looked at Richard, noticing him again. “Sorry,” I said. “What did you say?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Talk about woolgathering! I said—about ten minutes ago, by the way—‘What friend from Cambridge is Milburn entertaining?’ And then, if one is to be specific, I said, ‘Not that I blame him, mind, for sloping off from this particular gathering.’ And you just stood there, looking as though you ain’t heard a word I said. Whatever is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing. Ah—” It had never occurred to me that I would be asked to attach a name to this phantom guest of Milburn’s. “Esterbrook,” I said, finally.

  “Esterbrook!” said Richard, giving me an odd look. “Esterbrook? Ain’t he dead?”

  “Oh. Right. I must have meant, um, Fairhurst,” I tried to look abashed. “I always did get them confused.”

  If anything, Richard sounded even more surprised. “Bit difficult to confuse those two. And, anyway, didn’t think Milburn and Fairhurst got on,” he mused.

  Past his shoulder, I noticed Cecy standing in the doorway now, accompanied by her mother. Richard was still looking puzzled. “Could’ve sworn they hated each other!”

  I tore my gaze from Cecy’s pale, set face as Cambourne arrived at my side in time to hear the last. “I think your sister means that Milburn is entertaining Sherbrooke,” he said, handing me a glass of champagne, and bowing.

  I took it and momentarily debated pouring it over his head. I suspect he guessed something of my thoughts, though, because he said with alacrity, “You are looking flushed, Lady Gwen.” He smiled. “Quite beautiful, but flushed.”

  “Too dashed warm in here,” Richard offered.

  “Very warm, indeed,” I agreed in frigid tones.

  “Drink,” Cambourne said, nodding to the glass he had just handed me.

  I knew that he was trying to mitigate the shock by getting me to take a drink. “No, thank you, I don’t care for any at the moment.”

  He repossessed it and lifted it to his lips, then handed it back to me.

  “Are we sharing?” I asked. “I don’t share well. Phoebe Arundel still dislikes me because I would not share my nursery toys with her when I was four.”

  He looked down at me. “Have your own, then. But it’s for your own good, Gwen; it will cool you down.”

  “Oh, not anywhere near enough, I shouldn’t think,” I said, affixing a smile to my face, and not adding, as I would have liked, you odious, lying, cheating, high-handed, arrogant bastard.

  His eyes narrowed. “Surely it won’t do for you to become … overheated, Gwen,” he said lazily, looking at me in a manner that was not particularly brotherly, as he took back the glass and held it to my lips.

  I turned my head away. “Rather overfamiliar behavior from a brother-in-law, don’t you think?” And now I really did want the champagne. I reached out and took it, ignoring the flash of his smile. “But then,” I said, coldly, “you have likely been overfamiliar with a majority of the women in this room, so what is one more?”

  Cambourne looked amused as he glanced around the room. “Really? A majority? Don’t you think you might be somewhat overstating the case?” he drawled.

  “Oops,” I said, by way of reply, as the glass slid in my grasp and just happened to pour down the front of his pristine white satin waistcoat. I watched with satisfaction as the stain spread. “Now how could that have happened?”

  “Think nothing of it.” He extracted a handkerchief from his pocket and blotted the spill.

  “Oh, I won’t.”

  “It can be very difficult to overcome a natural tendency toward clumsiness,” he allowed.

  “True,” I replied, tipping my head back and draining the very small amount that remained in the glass with pleasure. I smiled at him. “Pity this isn’t just a little colder.”

  “Indeed,” he said levelly, as he liberated another glass from the tray of a passing footman. “Try this one—”

  But just as he said that, Richard—who I believed had been occupied for some time in attempting to count his own feet—stumbled when a young lady tripped against him, and banged heavily into Cambourne.

  “Oops,” Cambourne said as we both watched the contents of the glass he was holding slide down my front, soaking my gown.

  I looked down at my drenched bodice where the delicate shot-green silk no longer hinted at my curves, but clung, revealing them more or less in entirety.

  So did he.

  I lifted my chin, he pulled his gaze up, and our eyes met. At the stark hunger I saw in his, I felt color flood like a tide into my cheeks. Oh no, I thought, lifting my chin another notch. You don’t get to drool over Mathilde and then ogle me. I took his handkerchief.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said, clearly meaning no such thing. “But do tell me,” he said, all innocence as a smile lurked, “was this one colder?”

  “Actually, yes,” I said through still gritted teeth. “It was, considerably. But you tell me: Was this one smaller?” I gave him my sweetest smile, to let him know that I knew exactly where his gaze had been riveted.

  At this point Richard rejoined the conversation. “Did you say Milburn was with Sherbrooke? I wouldn’t expect to see ’im home and sober for a few days if I was you. If he ain’t turned up in a sennight, check the Blue Chamber at Madame—well … think it’s dashed nice myself to see you returned, Cambourne,” he finished in overly hearty tones, having apparently thought better of what he had been about to say. “Don’t you think it’s dashed nice to see him returned, Gwen?”

  “Ah yes,” I said. “Returned from, where was it, Cambourne?” And then I congratulated myself that it had just the right sound: cool and unruffled, not overly interested, and yet civil. “I can’t recall your precise location, but I seem to recall that I had heard you’d been, oh yes, called out of London, I believe it was.”

  “Perhaps,” he said lightly, “since my recent whereabouts are a topic of such consequence to you, Lady Gwen, we can talk of them while I escort you home.”


  “Home?” I said, raising a brow in inquiry.

  “Home. To my brother’s house, so you can change out of your wet gown before you contract influenza.”

  “Nonsense!” I said. “I’ve just arrived. I am not going anywhere. And Richard, too, is agog to hear about your travels.”

  “Actually, Gwen, and no offense intended here, Cambourne old man, but I ain’t all that interested,” Richard said, with an undertone of apology.

  “I understand completely,” Cambourne said, whilst I directed a glare at my brother.

  The malignancy of which Richard was completely insensible to. “As long as you are escorting her home, ask Gwen to fill you in on Milburn’s behavior,” he recommended.

  Cambourne turned to me, his brow raised. “Is there something I should know?” he inquired with every appearance of concern.

  “He is not escorting me home,” I said. “You are not escorting me home, Cambourne.”

  “Been tempted to go round and thump Milburn. Disappeared at his own wedding breakfast, y’know,” Richard said darkly.

  “Did he?” Cambourne sounded appropriately shocked. “Come away with me, then, Gwen,” he said, a glint in his eye that I could not like. “And on the carriage ride, you can tell me firsthand the tale of your ill-usage.”

  “There won’t be a carriage ride, as I am staying.” I crossed my arms.

  “What do you know!” said Richard. “I see just the person I have been looking for!”

  “Who?” I said to him, my doubt heavy in my tone. And then was rewarded when he colored as he glanced wildly around. Unfortunately for him, his eye alit on Rodney, Lord Worth.

  I smiled at his fate. Served him right.

  “Worth,” he said, as he ran a finger around his neckcloth.

  “Oh well, in that case,” I said. “I should not dream of standing in your way. Go.”

  “Let Cambourne bring you home to change,” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  “I understand completely,” Cambourne replied, still with that odd light in his eyes. “You cannot bring yourself to miss so much as a moment of the performance.”

  “Quite right,” I said. “It has already been impressive, and to think the music has not yet begun!”

  “So lowering,” he replied, lazily, as Richard beat his hasty retreat like the rat that he was, deserting the sinking ship that I was, “when the pretheater performance eclipses the actual event.”

  I looked up at him and gave him my most guileless smile. “Does that happen often?”

  The smile he returned was not guileless at all. “I have heard it does … to some.”

  “Does Mrs. Claussen dislike that also?”

  “Mrs. Claussen has yet to apprise me of any disappointments she may have suffered in that respect.” He took my arm. “Allow me to at least escort you to the ladies’ withdrawing room so you may repair yourself.”

  “No,” I said.

  “I fear that your mother would hold me accountable should you succumb to pneumonia from standing about in a wet gown,” he said.

  “My mama,” I retorted, “would not hold you accountable for anything, Cambourne, and well you know it. She would find a way to blame me for my own death, should the choice be between the two of us.”

  He bent very close and smiled. My heart flipped and I hated him. “Touché,” he said, offering his arm.

  What could I do? I took it and allowed him to lead me from the room.

  There was quite a bit that I would have liked to have said, but somehow, I felt it was incumbent upon him to offer the first explanation. The silence seemed to stretch between us, though, until after a few moments, I could stand it no more. “Bit surprised to see me here, were you?” I asked, in casual tones, once we had gained the relative quiet of the corridor.

  “I am sorry this had to happen, Gwen,” he said, his voice low.

  “That I had to be dragged into this sorry mess? Or that I had to witness your courtship of Mathilde Claussen?” I asked, knowing that I was not being entirely reasonable. “If courtship can be considered the right word. It had not hitherto occurred to me, Cambourne, that playing the husband would interfere with your social … diversions,” I added, pointedly, as I recalled the picture Mathilde Claussen had made, laughing up at him over her slowly moving fan.

  I was disastrously inept at any such wiles, but I was not precisely a stranger to the games of flirtation that went on between men and women. And there was something about the way he had leaned over her, the look she had been giving him, that made me burn with anger all over again, just thinking about it. Not with jealousy, but anger. And, well, perhaps a little jealousy.

  “We cannot talk about this here,” he said, smiling so it looked as though we were enjoying a pleasant conversation.

  I smiled back, just as sincerely. “Should we, perhaps, save it for the marital bedchamber?”

  “If you wish,” he replied, equably. “You need only leave the connecting door unlocked.” I spun away from him, and would have left, but he reached out and took my arm. “You can throw objects and accusations at my head later to your heart’s content.”

  He steered me up the stairs. “After I escort you back down,” he said in my ear in low tones, speaking quickly, “I shall leave for a time and then come back as Milburn so we can be seen together. Reserve a seat next to you for me. I know it was a shock,” he said, pushing me through the door of the ladies’ withdrawing room before I could ask any questions. “But you did well, Gwen.”

  “You will never be able to leave and come back as Milburn,” I told him as I paused, turning in the door. “People have just seen you. Surely they will not be deceived?”

  “Just watch,” he said, sounding a little grim, as he turned to leave. “I think you will find that people generally see what they want or expect to, and not much beyond that.”

  14

  The best laid plans, part two—In which I very much regret attending Caro Arbuthnot’s operetta

  “Your brother-in-law got himself a nice eyeful, did he?” Lady Wainwright asked with a perspicacity that surprised me, as she looked my wet dress up and down.

  “He hardly noticed,” I assured her as she raised her glass to her lips and drained it.

  “Didn’t look that way to me,” she said. “Looked like he was noticing every inch, and to judge by his expression, a few more, besides. Be a good girl, Cecy,” she added, without removing her eyes from me. “Run along and find me some liquid refreshment other than this pap. And do the thing quickly. Before I am reduced to sucking Lady Gwen’s gown for tra ces of champagne. I should think with your highly refined sensibilities, you would find that most embarrassing.”

  “Come, Cecy, I shall help,” I said, hoping to circumvent this eventuality. I took up Cecy’s arm and we left Lady Wainwright in Myrtia’s capable hands as we went to fetch the requested libation.

  There was much I wanted to ask Cecy, specifically about whether Barings was still sleeping at his club, but she forestalled me, holding up her hand. “Don’t,” she said.

  And I nodded, to show that I understood. “I thought you were not attending tonight,” I said, instead.

  “Mother wanted a night on the town,” she said, dully. “And with your little parting salvo this morning, I could hardly stay away. Besides,” she added, optimistically, “surely she cannot get up to any trouble here!”

  Ah, but how wrong she was.

  Bells tinkled to forewarn us that the musical portion of the evening was to begin. Lady Wainwright had been imbibing the arrack punch we had procured with gusto, and with each passing moment she seemed to grow rosier in countenance. We divided as we entered the music room, Cecy whispering in my ear that she thought her mother would be better behaved were they to sit on their own.

  Myrtia and I sat together. Caro, according to Myrtia, was rumored to have been working under the tutelage of a Signor Delfino, from a traveling Italian opera company, so the evening might not be as hopeless as one had assumed.
I settled in to try to forget the early part of the evening and enjoy the music as best I could.

  To say the music was good would have been an overstatement. Overall, it was more competent than arresting, but it was not nearly so unpleasant as I had feared. After a while, Cambourne returned and slid into the seat beside me. He was Milburn now, though; there was no doubt about it. He had somehow managed to crimp his hair into tousled curls, and had stuffed himself into a bottle-green brocaded ensemble with great falls of lace at the wrists and throat. And don’t ask me how he did it—perhaps he was not so mistaken about people seeing what they expect to see—but he somehow seemed softer, less physically commanding.

  “Hallo, darling.” He languidly picked up my hand and made a display of kissing it. “Decided I couldn’t bear to be parted from you for an entire evening,” he added, loudly, lest anyone had missed his display. “Told Sherbrooke that, I did, and here I am.” No one shushed him.

  “Yes, here you are,” I said, removing my hand from his grasp with an alacrity that did not much speak of spousal fondness. He seemed unperturbed, however, as he crossed his legs and in his best Milburn fashion slouched back in his chair.

  Caro was singing in Italian, moderately credibly, of love and loss, when I was distracted by something of a commotion in front. My heart sank as I realized the source of this bustle of activity was none other than Lady Wainwright. She stood and swayed unsteadily, raising the specter that she would fall upon one of her neighbors in the closely packed rows. “I like to sh—sh—sing a bit myself!” she shouted, and, hoisting herself atop her chair, cleared her throat.

  “Oh no,” Myrtia breathed. I could see Cecy tugging at her mother’s hand, to no avail.

  “Thish melody ain’t original,” Lady Wainwright shouted, as she swayed. “Sho sh—sh—sing along if you know it. She took a breath, and clearing her throat, deepened her voice to a resonant contralto that quite put Caro’s soprano to shame.