The Accidental Duchess Read online

  He had put down his journal, but held the quill between his fingers, still. He looked oh, so sure of himself, and suddenly I felt the anger curl through me. He hadn’t gone two days without eating. He hadn’t been tricked at the altar and almost seduced, or lied to, or not told the reasons for any of this. I doubted that his head felt as if it were about to burst. He looked like a man who is entirely sure of his place in the world. Too sure. “Cambourne,” I said, firmly, feeling my hands curl into fists.

  He met my gaze squarely. “Yes, Gwen?”

  “You have to tell me,” I said. “Why?”

  He stood then, and walked to me, with that graceful economy of movement that I recognized now should have tipped me immediately that he wasn’t Milburn. “I’m sorry,” he said, not sounding it at all, to my mind. “But I can’t.” He sat down on the bed next to me, and I turned my head away as I felt the soft down of the mattress dip under him.

  “I see,” I said tightly. “You can’t or you won’t?”

  He took my hand, and despite myself, my heart speeded up. He reached out and stroked my cheek, so that I turned toward him, almost involuntarily. “Gwen,” he said, his voice rich and dark. “Does that really matter?”

  I jerked my hand away and scrambled further upright on the bed. “How on earth can you say that?”

  He looked almost impatient. “Because it’s true. We are in the situation we are in.”

  “But, Cambourne,” I said, very patiently and slowly, because I sensed it would irritate him. “You don’t seem to realize that I hold all the cards. Let me get this right: You want me to pretend that you are your brother, stay married to you, and not ask any questions?”

  “Yes,” he agreed as though such a thing were entirely credible.

  “But that’s not reasonable of you,” I pointed out.

  He came closer. “In what way?” he asked, leaning down slightly, so I was backed against the pillows.

  “All I have to do is tell everyone the truth,” I pointed out.

  “You won’t do that,” he replied with such an air of certainty that I wanted to hit him.

  I settled, however, for raising a brow (much more ladylike). “And why not?”

  He leaned over me in earnest then. “Because,” he said, from very close, “you don’t hold nearly so many cards as you seem to believe.” He bent his head and his lips grazed past mine. “I hold just a few myself,” he murmured against my cheek, as he laced our fingers together. His lips moved to my ear, and caressed it. I had a very difficult time not sighing in pleasure. “One or two,” he murmured, the words vibrating against my skin.

  My eyes fell closed. Although my anger was not in the least abated, I could see no reason to tell him to stop at this precise moment. Not just yet. And oddly, the urge to hit him seemed to have settled into something different. I was still agitated, vibrating almost, in fact, but it had an entirely different feel.

  “Gwen,” he breathed, as he pinned my hands on the bed next to me. I looked down at the top of his head, as his lips brushed against my neck. Kissing the hollow there, and making me want to squirm with the warmth. The tip of his tongue traced the faintest pattern. The pain in my head was entirely forgotten. My limbs felt heavy and sort of tingling. “This could be so easy,” he whispered seductively, as his warm mouth dipped lower, to the neckline of my gown. “So easy between us. If only you would let it.”

  Oh, don’t get me wrong. More than half of me wanted to. Just one more minute I promised myself, but then his mouth grazed over my breast. Fully covered, by both gown and chemise, and still I could feel it with a shuddering jolt, his breath, warm and moist, and knew instinctively what I had to do.

  “Touch me, Cambourne,” I whispered. “Really touch me.”

  And when he freed my hands to do just that, I pushed him. As hard as I could, and he reeled back. “What on this earth,” I demanded, scrambling to sit up against the pillows, “ever made you think I would go along with this in the first place?”

  And despite what I had just done—what he had just been doing—he looked cool as a cucumber as he smiled down at me. “Because, Gwen,” he said. “You always do what you’re told.”

  9

  In which Cecy and Myrtia give me food for thought

  “How insulting! What did you say?” exclaimed Cecy, interrupting my recitation of events.

  “What could I say? It is nothing but the truth,” I admitted. “I do always do what I am told. So”—I shrugged—“I had some supper and took a hot bath.”

  Cecy brightened. “Please say he climbed right in with you!” Then, when I shook my head, offered, “I can tell you how to lure him in the next time, if you’d like.”

  “Cecy!” Myrtia said, with a warning in her tone.

  Whatever Cecy would have replied was forestalled by the arrival of her husband. “Hello, Gwen, Myrtia, Cecy darling.” Without removing his gaze from the book he carried, Barings bowed to us. “Did you know, my love,” he continued conversationally, “that there are several dozen men about, hanging something apparently designed to make my study look like a madam’s second-best bedchamber?”

  “Do you mean you don’t like the new wallcovering?” Cecy asked with a frown.

  “Not at all,” he replied equably. He still had not looked up from his book. How did the man avoid injury?

  “Simon!” Cecy said. “How exactly do you know what a madam’s second-best bedchamber looks like?”

  “Hearsay only, my love.” He dropped a kiss on her head and made to depart. “I was always in the best.” Then he actually looked up at our faces. “Oh,” he said. “That was a joke.”

  “It’s not that, Simon,” Cecy assured him, and he drifted out of the room, underlining something in his book.

  “What else did Cambourne say, Gwen?” Myrtia asked when he had gone.

  “Other than that I always do what I’m told? Let me see. Quite a few things, actually: that he couldn’t tell me why, that we were where we were, and that I didn’t hold all the cards,” I said.

  “And where precisely do you suppose his attempting to take you to bed fits in?” Cecy asked.

  “It does beg the question: Why?” Myrtia said, and then looked at me. “Not, of course,” she added, quickly, “that a man wouldn’t have every reason to want to marry you, Gwen, but—”

  “It’s all right,” I told her. “I agree completely; it makes no sense.”

  “And he absolutely knew what he was doing,” said Cecy, decisively. “The question, as Myrtia so succinctly phrased it, is, why? Why did he do it?”

  “Do you suppose something terrible might have befallen Milburn!” I asked them, and felt my voice catch in my throat at the thought of poor, hapless Bertie. “Suppose he, in his final hour, asked his brother to take care of me!”

  Myrtia’s eyes shimmered with tears of sympathy. “And he thought of you at the end!”

  Cecy, though, looked less convinced. “It’s not that I’m unfeeling, Gwen,” she said, firmly, “but really, Milburn is like one of those cats, you know, who refuses to chase mice like all the other cats and sleeps in front of the fire all day, eating all the choicest morsels until he finally gets tossed out of the house for revolting behavior—like eating all the lobster patties and then being sick all over the clothespress. Then he turns up again months later, and everyone, despite themselves, welcomes him with open arms. And besides,” she added for good measure, “if it had been the case, that something terrible had befallen him, Cambourne would have just told you.”

  Which, I had to concede, was true. “Milburn, then, is like a fat, lazy cat?” I said.

  “Well, I didn’t mean it in an unkind way,” Cecy said. “And only think of those nine lives!”

  “But, even putting the marriage aside,” Myrtia said, wrinkling her forehead, “why would Cambourne ever conceivably want to continue to pass himself off as Milburn?”

  I dropped my gaze. “That is what I am saying; none of this makes any sense whatsoever. And Cambourne is a
rrogant and irritating, and won’t tell me anything. When I tried to insist, he—”

  “What?” Cecy asked, with interest. “He what?”

  “Kissed me,” I admitted.

  “And I collect you stopped asking questions at that point?” Cecy inquired.

  I looked down, but forbore to answer. Which, of course, was as much answer as she needed. She smiled.

  Myrtia squinted. No doubt this was the expression she used to convey deep thought about weighty topics at Mrs. Robichon’s Thursday At-Home Literary Salons, but she actually looked rather more charming than anything. “But what does he want you to do?”

  Now that I could answer. “To live with him under the pretext that he is Milburn,” I said. “To help him in his masquerade. And all without asking any questions.”

  “Do you know what I think?” Cecy asked.

  “No, but somehow I am confident I will soon,” I retorted.

  Cecy smiled. “I think,” she said, “that it must be something dire. Dire enough that he had no choice.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I could never have come up with that myself. And it’s flattering, besides.”

  “Not flattering, perhaps, but pragmatic,” Cecy said.

  “Has he said what he expects—what he plans to do about, well—” Myrtia blushed.

  “The marriage bed, do you mean, Myrtia?” asked Cecy, with a raised brow. “I think we know what he expected to do about it at the outset. But now … interesting question, indeed. What exactly does he expect, Gwen?”

  I met Myrtia’s gaze instead of Cecy’s. “I don’t know.”

  “But I suppose that being the ever moral and prudent girl that you are, you are determined to resist Cambourne’s considerable charms and wait to see if Milburn comes back to lay his rightful claim to you?” Cecy asked.

  “Yes,” I said, raising my chin.

  She laughed. “I’d lay a monkey on it that after once with Cambourne, going back to Milburn would be like, I don’t know, going from riding a thoroughbred to a cart horse. But then,” she added with a shrug, “I suppose under this arrangement you won’t be riding Cambourne at all, so you’ll likely never know what you’re missing.”

  I looked at Cecy, with her modish outfit and glossy blond curls, sitting in her gracious morning room. “Really, Cecy, you might look every inch the proper lady, but you are absolutely appalling,” I said.

  She smiled. “It’s only the truth,” she insisted, and then became serious again. “And anyway, if Cambourne’s half the man I credit him, he’ll find a way to take what he wants.”

  I took a breath. “Well, I am in control of that,” I said, taking some consolation from the fact that I could at least honestly say that that was true.

  “How does he seem to feel about this … arrangement?” asked Myrtia.

  “I honestly do not know,” I said. “In fact, I’ve no idea how he feels about anything.”

  “That’s not Cambourne, Gwen, that’s men,” Cecy said, with asperity. “Are you imagining that Milburn would be declaring his emotions at the drop of a hat?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “But Milburn, somehow, is more of an open book. He isn’t overly complicated. Give him some decent food and drink, a few gaudy waistcoats, and a chair at his club, and he’s happy. Cambourne is more like reading a book in a language you don’t quite know—a few words here and there make sense, but that doesn’t mean you understand it.”

  “Interesting analogy,” Myrtia said. “Because many people find learning a foreign language, although difficult, is more rewarding… .”

  My eyes filled. I was silent for a moment, gazing out at the trees in Berkeley Square, which blurred as I blinked the tears back.

  “Gwen?” said Cecy, taking up my hand.

  “You married for love,” I said.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “I did. I married Barings because I love him. I also married him,” she said, “for practical reasons. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, you know.”

  “You? Practical?” I teased, sniffing back my tears. “Tell me.”

  “Well—” Cecy took a deep breath—“it was also because he is good and honorable and his mother would not dream of singing bawdy songs from atop the pianoforte or publicly taking lovers young enough to be her sons. And it seemed unlikely in the extreme that Barings would end up the type of man who would gamble and whore his family into debt and disgrace,” she finished bluntly.

  Poor Cecy would forever be trying to live down her parents’ antics. And it was true, Barings was such a stolid counterpoint to Cecy’s sometimes outrageous spirits that it had often seemed something of a mystery that she loved him so steadfastly.

  “Yes, there were wealthier, handsomer, more exciting men who offered for me,” she continued. “But Barings is so very respectable—quite, quite, atrociously dull in his values, if not his birth, as my mother so despairingly put it. I do love him, yes, but I recognize that marriage is more than that, and I love him all the more for that realization.” Cecy raised her chin. “And,” she added, the glint coming back into her eyes, “he is the most astounding lover. The things that man can come up with—”

  “You did not know that before you were married, however,” Myrtia said firmly.

  “Naturally not,” agreed Cecy merrily. “And before you two poker up at me, let me assure you, men speak of these things all the time.”

  “This is very amusing,” said Myrtia firmly, “if vastly improper, but it is not solving anything for Gwen.”

  “Ah, but it could. What I was getting at,” Cecy said, “is that what you expect in a husband is not necessarily what you need in a husband when it comes down to it.”

  I frowned at her. “What are you really saying, Cecy?”

  “What I am saying, is that perhaps you should try looking at it as a lucky escape. Regardless of why he did it, Cambourne is by far the better choice for you.”

  “The thing is,” I said, wanting desperately to make some sense of this, “that all my life, I’ve seen Milburn from the perspective of being the man who would be my husband, and Cambourne as his brother. I never balked at doing what I was told—as Cambourne pointed out in so ungentlemanly a manner—even though I did not in all honesty love Milburn. But I don’t know Cambourne in the same way, never saw him in that way. And, somehow, that matters. Do you understand?”

  They both nodded, and then Cecy said, “Well, any number of women have seen him in that way, and should you decide not to keep him—”she grinned wickedly—“they will be only too happy to step into your place.”

  “Yes,” I said, using my foot to smooth a pattern across the thick nap of the Turkey carpet. “I’ve heard things to that effect.” I looked up at Cecy. “Tell me.”

  She shrugged. “He’s almost shockingly handsome, Gwen; he’s wealthy beyond imagining; he’s heir to a dukedom. Surely opportunity must cross his path daily. And, on occasion, I would imagine he avails himself of what is so freely offered.”

  “Who?” I asked her, wondering, as I did, why I wanted to know so very badly.

  “Who what?” Myrtia asked.

  But Cecy understood me well enough. “Last I heard? Mathilde Claussen,” she said, so promptly that I knew this liaison must have been the topic of some considerable discussion. I knew Mathilde Claussen. Unfortunately. She was a ravishing young widow with such a charming manner that even all the women liked her. I did, myself.

  I shut my eyes for a second, against the sudden image of Cambourne letting her hair down, and watching himself unwrap her body in front of a darkened window. Whispering words of desire into her ear.

  I opened my eyes and gave Cecy a questioning look. “I see. And are there others?”

  “Not that I know of, at the moment,” she said. “But I would say without question that there have been.”

  “And is Mrs. Claussen still, well, present?”

  She hesitated, just a moment too long. “Cecy?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know, Gwen,” s
he said. “The rumor mill has it that he has seemed unusually besotted by her.”

  “I see,” I said. “Although it is of no concern to me, of course.” Which was entirely true.

  Cecy said, “Look, Gwen, you do need bear in mind that it is only rumor. In truth, I am not certain of how things stand between them—he is not a man to parade his indiscretions.”

  “No, but the fact remains that he is still a man who has them,” I said.

  Cecy gave me a good, long, look. “You would prefer to marry a man of no experience in the world, then? Because if that is your point, I can assure you that Milburn is hardly the one.”

  I was about to say something cutting (although I hadn’t exactly figured it out yet), when Myrtia joined in. “In all fairness,” she said, “considering the circumstances, you can hardly hold Cambourne’s past against him.”

  “She’s right,” Cecy said. “And now that he’s done it, and married you, the question is not so much why, because that is out of your hands, but, what are you going to do about this?”

  “Oh no,” said Myrtia, with real trepidation. “You are not going to interfere!”

  “I shouldn’t dream of interfering,” Cecy lied promptly. “I was merely thinking that perhaps we should assist Gwen by helping her discover what has transpired.”

  I looked at her. “What do you have in mind, Cecy?”

  “Yes, what, precisely?” Myrtia added.

  Cecy waved away our objections. “You two have no spirit of adventure,” she said.

  “No, we two have a modicum of intelligence and common sense,” Myrtia said.

  “Seems to me if you had that much of either, Gwen, you wouldn’t have ended up married to the wrong man,” Cecy pointed out.

  “Well, Cecy,” I said, “I think we’ve both learned our lessons about your schemes the hard way. Be warned: I’ve no intention of disguising myself as a coachman, this time.”

  “That Bow Street runner was very nice, actually,” Cecy said coldly. “Once you returned the pocket watch. And Lord Smythe-Tobias was most understanding about the wrecked coach.”