The Accidental Duchess Page 18

  He was indisputably himself. Lean and immaculately tailored and … drunk? I wondered, as I took in the glitter in his eyes. And likely fresh from Mathilde Claussen’s arms, if not her bed.

  “No,” I said, sweetly, trying to discreetly close the drawer of his desk behind my back. “I did not want to interfere with your amorous activities by bumping into you anywhere. Since I do understand that it is of the utmost importance that you are able to be yourself with rakish impunity.”

  “Well then,” he said, still leaning against the door. “Since one does so hate to reiterate the same tedious conversation over and over, I will simply say that your assistance and tact is much appreciated. Not to mention your rifling my desk. I should likely save you the trouble by telling you that you will not find what you are looking for there.”

  “Or anywhere, apparently. But thank you, all the same.” I smiled, insincerely. “I trust that the evening’s raking about helped keep your reputation intact?”

  “Never better,” he said, straightening and taking a step toward me. His hand closed about my wrist and he pulled, gently. I stood, and looked up to him. “Perhaps,” he whispered, “you would care to assess my techniques?”

  I went up on my toes. “You are not too tired?” I inquired. “I would have assumed you to have quite worn yourself out. Your stamina must be the envy of all of London.”

  He laughed. “And quite a bit of the countryside, beside,” he said, pulling me roughly against him.

  I almost sighed as the heat flashed as I was pulled up against his smooth, hard body, enveloped once again by the clean smell of him. He certainly was not … worn out. That much I could tell. And I knew, somehow, that whatever his faults, he would not have come to me like this from another woman’s bed. I let him pull me closer, and watched his eyes fall closed as he bent his head to mine. I reached up, around his neck, heedless of his cravat, and he groaned as his lips found mine.

  “Where have you been, Cambourne?” I asked, against his mouth.

  “Nowhere that concerns you,” he replied, dipping his head to nip at my ear.

  “Oh!” I said, leaning my head, to give him better access to my neck. “But it does.”

  “No,” he said, doing something to my neck with his teeth that made me want to squirm against him. “It doesn’t.”

  “Damn you,” I whispered, as his hands slid down my spine, to the small of my back, and pressed me against him. I was almost whimpering with the desire for them to stay there. “How could I have thought you were honorable.”

  His silky hair brushed my face as he moved his head to lick at the hollow of my throat. My head fell back. “And how could I have thought you were biddable?” he asked.

  I jerked my head up and pushed him away. Biddable!

  “I misjudged, apparently,” he said, coolly, his eyes unreadable.

  “Yes,” I said, as I turned. “You did.” And then I stalked from the room, churning with equal parts fury and frustration.

  I avoided him the next morning, remaining in my chamber, seething and refusing to emerge until I had sent Crewes down to check that he was gone out for the foreseeable future. But that evening, he returned to the house in his Milburn garb, catching me unaware at tea, and announced, in his Milburn voice, “Dropped a packet o’ blunt at Tatt’s today on a real sweet goer, for you, a prime little chestnut.” Then he changed to his own voice. “She’s a beauty, Gwen. Even-tempered and yet not too biddable to be spirited. In short, perfect.”

  “Do I understand,” I asked, “that the perfect horse is not too biddable?”

  Our eyes met. “Yes,” he said. “You do.”

  But I could not resist pushing just a little further. “And that her lack of biddableness is a desirable quality?”

  His quick smile flashed and those dimples appeared.

  “Yes,” he said, “it is.”

  And I had known it was a peace offering.

  “I thought you might miss riding. I recall that you always enjoyed it at home. Come see her.” And then he had extended his hand and I had taken it and we had walked together out to the little stable in the mews behind the house.

  It had felt like just the smallest victory.

  Her name was Dulcinea, Dulcie for short. The product of Moreford’s prize thoroughbred and Glendavy’s Irish mare, he told me, as she whickered, pushing her soft nose against my hand.

  “Thank you,” I said, almost in a whisper, and that something was there again, churning up the air between us. Our gazes caught and held until we both took a step back at the same time. We agreed to ride together, then, on Friday morning, two days hence. It was almost pitiful how much I was looking forward to it.

  The next morning, though, I woke up early. I tried to will myself back to sleep, but was simply too restless. I drew the curtains to discover that it was one of those rare occurrences—a fine day in London in winter. Even though Cambourne and I weren’t scheduled to ride together until tomorrow, I was anxious to test Dulcie’s paces. I rang for Crewes and sent her to ask a groom to prepare to accompany me and then she hurried back with a tray and to help me dress. A short time later, I was quietly descending the stairs. I had assumed Cambourne was still abed, but as soon as I heard the music, the soft tones of someone playing a cello floating across the hall, I knew it had to be him.

  I stood, on the steps, outside the closed door to the music room, and listened. I recognized the song as, “Lull Me Beyond Thee,” and the music struck me as absolutely heartbreaking. To my admittedly imperfect ear, it sounded as though every note was just right, but also, somehow, deeply felt. I realized that I had never known he was musical, and wondered briefly what he had made of Caro Arbuthnot’s dreadful masque. On the one hand, I wanted to walk in and tell him how lovely it was, and ask him to play for me sometime in the evening, perhaps even offer to accompany him on the pianoforte. And on the other, I felt like an interloper. It seemed, somehow, like a private moment for him, and I was not certain that I should have been standing there.

  I was having a hard time walking away, though. For some reason I could almost picture him. I knew, even, which chair he was sitting in. The carved mahogany Hepplewhite in the corner near the window. He would have his eyes closed; well, I amended, perhaps he would need to be reading the music. His hair would be straight. Cambourne hair. And no doubt, falling down over his forehead. He would have the slightest frown between his brows. And then, I really did feel like an interloper. So I straightened, brushed away my inexplicable tears, and continued on my way. I did not see him again that day.

  In the days that followed, we fell into the habit of having an early ride together in the park every morning that weather permitted. It was interesting to me that the one place he seemed to have trouble adopting his Milburn mantle was on horseback. He would mount, fuss conspicuously with his various frills, and amble indolently out of the stable. But almost immediately after that, I could almost see the urge to ride neck or nothing steal over him. Once we had achieved the park, he invariably asked if I wanted to race. And even though he won handily every time, I always agreed. I suspect the reason I did had something to do with seeing him allow himself a few moments of genuine pleasure.

  “I do not know why I agree to race you, you odious man,” I said one morning. “The very least you could do is allow me to win just once! It’s only gentlemanly, you know.”

  “It is gentlemanly for me to assume that you would be foolish enough to believe it were I to pretend that my horse is not faster and that riding sidesaddle is not to your disadvantage?”

  “Absolutely,” I replied.

  “That,” he said, looking at me with an odd intensity, “is how men behave with their bits of muslin, not with women whose intellect they respect and admire.”

  “Do you respect and admire me, Cambourne?” I asked, truly wanting to know.

  “Are you begging for compliments?” he asked, with a smile.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Then, yes,” he said, roughly.
“More and more every day.”

  “Well, you are not supposed to make us respected and admired females feel inferior,” I told him with severity. “Our intellects may be formidable, but our sensibilities are easily offended.”

  He laughed and I glared at him. “It’s not fair, Cambourne. We shall have to match our abilities at something where I stand a chance of winning.”

  “Actually, I think we do. Every day,” he said quietly, as he easily moved his horse closer. “You make me look at aspects of myself that I would prefer to ignore, Gwen,” he said, bending slightly and brushing my cheek with his leather glove. “It may not be something one can measure in tangibles, but don’t ever underestimate how important a gift that is.”

  And as my heart raced at his words, I reminded myself most firmly that I really must redouble my efforts to find out what had become of Milburn, because this simply would not do. That resolve, however, did not stop me from hugging those words to myself all that day, like a shawl. And it became something of an obsession for me to rise early enough to hear Cambourne at his music before we left for the park. I had got into the habit of sitting on the bottom step, outside the music room, and listening. I never mentioned it, though, and by the time he had emerged, I would be waiting for him, sipping coffee in the breakfast room, dressed and ready to go.

  As Cambourne, he went to endless debates in Parliament. It seemed that things were particularly heating up over my father’s pet cause, the Corn Laws. And two nights running Cambourne had left the parliamentary session and gone back to Cambourne House with several ministers, to continue to discuss into the night the proposed changes that seemed to have everyone up in arms. He slept there, both those nights, but returned in the morning.

  After the second time, I said to him over breakfast, “All my life it seems, someone or other has been droning on about these Corn Laws. What are they, actually?”

  He finished chewing his bite of beefsteak and put down his fork. He was dressed as Milburn, but his voice was pure Cambourne when he said, “Do you really not know?”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t.” I frowned. “Why would I?”

  “It’s just that your father, or perhaps your mother, actually, is at the forefront of the disagreement over them. I suppose I had simply assumed it would have been a commonplace topic of discussion in their household.”

  “They don’t spend a great deal of time in conversation with each other.” I took a careful bite of my egg. We had also fallen into the habit of taking our breakfast together after our ride. But for some reason, eating alone with him still made me uneasy; I was always waiting to spill something down my front or realize that I had something hideous stuck between my teeth.

  “I don’t suppose my parents do either.” We were both silent for a moment, and then he said, idly, “Did you envision that you and Milburn would spend much time in conversation?”

  I thought about this. “Beyond, ‘the weather is very fine today!’ ‘True. And what do you think of this waistcoat?’ ‘Why it suits you to perfection.’ ‘But is it au courant enough?’ ‘Why yes, I do think so.’ ‘Excellent. Shall I see you tonight at the Billingsleys’?’ do you mean?”

  He smiled. “Yes. Beyond that is precisely what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t suppose so,” I said, spreading jam on my toast. “But in truth I’d never thought much about it. I doubt it’s occurred to my parents, either, that they would want to converse more than that.”

  “But surely,” he said, looking reflective, “your parents must discuss parliamentary issues? Your mama often seems to me to be the driving force behind your father’s ambitions.”

  “Oh, she is.” I put down my toast. “But Mama and Violetta write his opinions, you see, and then tell him what they are.”

  He looked amused. “It must be nice not to be obligated to waste time coming up with them on one’s own,” he said.

  “That is what Father always says,” I agreed. “But then I don’t suppose with Mama it would make much difference if he wanted to. Likely a good thing for him that he doesn’t.”

  A footman appeared with more coffee, and I added cream to mine. “Actually,” I said, not looking at him, “it might be interesting to find out what this is all about, this Corn Laws business.”

  I suppose I had expected that he would laugh off my interest. I was not precisely known for my intellectual pursuits, after all. He seemed to be studying me, and then he said, “Would you like me to tell you about it? Or if you prefer, I can bring you something to read at your leisure. I can easily have my secretary at Cambourne House put together a packet for you.”

  “I’d like that,” I said, wondering if I really would.

  “Consider it done.” He rose and dropped his serviette on the table. “And now I’ve an appointment with Milburn’s tailor. I understand pomona green with silver embroidery is de rigueur this season if one is to be comme il faut,” he said, in his Milburn drawl. “I shall see you this evening at eight of the clock for the theater?” Then he kissed my hand and left.

  “Corn Laws!” said Myrtia as we strolled down Wigmore Street on our way to buy ribbons. Crewes and Myrtia’s maid, Louise, followed at a discreet distance, carrying our packages.

  Cecy had declined to accompany us, which was worrying. “Saving my shillings for my mother’s allowance,” she had announced gloomily.

  The Honorable Mr. Theobald Newstrom and Lord Rothwell were tooling down the street in a phaeton perched so high it looked in danger of tumbling over on its side with every bump in the road it passed over. “Ladies,” cried Rothwell, doffing his hat. “Good day, Miss Conyngham, Lady Bertie. You’re both looking vastly fetching this morning.”

  We nodded a greeting to them. “Yes,” I said to Myrtia as we turned into Clark and Denham of Cavendish House, Purveyors of Sarsenets, Satins, Millinery, and Pelisses. “I find I am developing quite an interest in the Corn Laws.”

  She was examining and discarding bonnet ribbons and trimmings in a very decisive way. “Is there anything to be done, do you think, about Cecy and Barings?” she asked. “I cannot credit that he is behaving this way when she so obviously needs him.”

  I looked at the pink ribbons she had put down. I quite liked them for my new bonnet. What I really wanted was to ask her about Mr. Wickersham, my curiosity roused, I suppose, by the odd turn my own life had taken. What had been between them? Was she waiting for him? Did she love him? But I didn’t know how to start. “I agree,” I said. “But it’s so hard with Cecy to know how much help she wants, and when one is overstepping.” Myrtia agreed with that, and then I went on, tentatively, “Myrsh?”

  “Yes?”

  “Ah, Mr. Wickersham—Am I overstepping my bounds with you if I ask?”

  “Of course not,” she said, just a little too quickly as she picked up some yellow ribbons and examined them with surely more interest than they deserved. “These are nice,” she said, “don’t you think?”

  “No,” I said. “I think they’re perfectly repulsive.”

  She smiled and put them down. “You are right. The truth is that I do not love Mr. Wickersham,” she said decisively. “I feel a great deal of … fondness for him.”

  “And is he aware of this lack of more heated emotions on your part?”

  “Not precisely,” she said, once again picking up the loathsome yellow ribbons. “It hardly seems the type of thing one wants to send a soldier in a letter.”

  “No,” I agreed.

  Then she said, “But I beg of you, let us speak no more of it for the moment. I can hardly bear to think of it myself.”

  We then went on to spend a pleasant interlude at Hatchard’s bookshop, after which I returned home, and Cambourne (as Milburn, naturally) and I went to the theater followed by a late supper at the Newsomes’.

  It was all starting to feel almost dangerously cozy and domestic.

  17

  In which I read about the Corn Laws with a most surprising outcome

  Which is why I di
dn’t hesitate the next evening, when Cambourne suggested we take a night off from the social whirl. A quiet night at home, he had said, just like any other old married couple on a Tuesday night. And, he added, he had the packet on Corn Laws that I had requested.

  I declined to think about the myriad ways in which we were emphatically not any other old married couple, Tuesday night or not. I also declined to tell him that my enthusiasm for furthering my education on the topic of the Corn Laws had dimmed a bit after listening to an extremely tedious exchange on the subject at the Newsomes’ just last night. I had been seated between Mr. William Huskisson and Charles Spencer, Lord Althorp, and the two of them had shouted cholerically over me for what seemed like hours while Cambourne, as Milburn, had flirted outrageously first with the beauteous Lady Elizabeth Hounslow, to his left, and then the almost equally fetching Mrs. Alnwick, to his right.

  Cambourne handed a packet to me. “As promised, a treatise on the Corn Laws, including but not limited to, the Reverend T. R. Malthus’s essay.”

  “Oh. Thank you.” It was just a trifle thicker than I had anticipated. “I’m looking forward to it. Enormously.”

  “Yes, well, you’re bound to find it fascinating. I envy you, really. Quite a treat to be able to read it for the first time.”

  I looked sharply at his face to see whether he was having a laugh at my expense, but his expression gave nothing away. Before, well, all this, I would have taken his bland look at face value. But now, I knew, just somehow knew, that he was secretly amused. It took me by surprise, for a moment, this realization that I was moving toward being able to read him.

  Fine. Let him be amused, I decided, vowing to stun him with the depth, insight, and understanding I was no doubt about to glean. “Yes, well, as I said, I’m looking forward to it.”

  “You did mention that,” he agreed, still with the utmost gravity, and I had to restrain myself from glaring at him.

  We sat down across from each other, in armchairs on opposite sides of the library fire. Cambourne crossed his booted foot over his knee and picked up his little leather-bound journal. I flipped over the tract he had handed me: 273 pages!