Barbara Metzger (22 page)

The duke knew for a fact Trevor died of a weakness of the lungs. That’s when Sondra started wrapping her own boys in cotton. He was not about to mention that tidbit either, having learned early on that facts only slowed his lady’s flow of thought, never diverted it or dammed it. “Well, I don’t think you need worry about them hanging on your sleeves. That Harriet Windham’s managed to get them on all the right guest lists.”

“I always supposed that nipcheese was behind this whole thing, trying to snabble rich husbands for her nieces. Heaven knows what she hopes to do for her own whey-faced chit, but she’s not going to snag my sons!”

“I hear the elder Miss Lattimore is a real beauty,” the duke offered.

His lady waved that aside. “I hope a Mainwaring has too much sense to fall for a pretty face. Those empty-headed belles make poor—what do you mean, you
hear
she’s a beauty? Haven’t you seen her for yourself, this harpy with her claws in your own son? Didn’t you care sufficiently to take your head out of that dreary office long enough to check, you pettifogging excuse for a father?”

“I care, blast it, I care!” The duke was shouting, growing red in the face.

The duchess ran to the mantel and handed him the ormolu clock there. “Here, throw this,” she said. “Your aunt Lydia sent it as a wedding gift. I always hated it.”

The duke carefully placed the ornate thing back in its spot. “I know, that’s why I always kept it.” Then he turned to her and grinned. “Ah, Sondra, my sunshine, how I have missed you.”

The duchess colored prettily, and at her age! “Sussex is not so far away, you know.”

“But would I find welcome there, or would a dog be sleeping in my bed like last time, when I had to take a guest room?”

“Are you trying to change the subject, Hamilton? It won’t wash. What about the boys?”

“Dash it, Sondra, they are men, not boys, and I do care. I care enough to let them make their own mistakes, the same way we did.”

“And look where it got us!” she retorted.

“I am,” was all he said, and she was glad she had on her new lilac gown, the way he was staring at her with that special gleam in his eye.

“Humph! First we’ll see about those upstarts, then we’ll see about that.”

The duchess took her battle to the enemy camp. The duke hurried out to buy a new corset.

* * * *

Lady Mayne was not surprised to find Harriet Windham at the Lattimores’ for tea, she was only surprised how much she still disliked the woman after all these years. Trust that lickpenny to eat anyone else’s food but her own and to thrust her own fubsy daughter into a prettier girl’s orbit.

The duchess could not like how Lady Windham rushed to greet her at the door, neatly stepping in front of the pretty gal and pinching the other chit when she started to say something. Now the toadeater was ordering the Misses Lattimore to tend to less noble guests, including the duchess’s son Brennan, while Harriet fawned over the most exalted. Gads, if she had wanted a chat with the squeeze-farthing, Her Grace would have called at Windham House, not Park Lane. And she would have eaten more first. The almond tarts she was generously being offered here—by the daughters of the house, not servants, she noted—were quite good.

She delicately wiped a crumb from her lip and fired her first salvo: “My dear Harriet, I know it has been ages, but you must not let me keep you from the rest of your calls.”

“Don’t think anything of it, Your Grace. Beatrix and I have nowhere better—”

Second round: “I am sure. I would like to get to know Elizabeth’s charming daughters, however.”

“How kind you are to take an interest. Perhaps I should plan a dinner—”

The broadside: “Alone. Now.”

Brennan came to her side after the Windhams left. “Masterful, Your Grace,” he applauded. “May I stay, or am I
de trop
also?”

“You may bring me that attractive young woman you were drooling over, then take yourself off.”

“Attractive? Mother, she’s the most beautiful girl in the world. And the sweetest. And just wait till you see her on a horse.”

“What, that porcelain doll?”

Bren grinned, reminding her of his father when they met. “She’s naught but a country girl, Mother. She knows all about flowers and things. I can’t wait to show her your gardens at the Chance, and see what she thinks about that old property of Uncle Homer’s.” The duchess sighed. She was too late.

She was also delighted with Winifred, who truly was as lovely as she was pretty. She was unspoiled and unaffected, only slightly in awe of meeting Bren’s august parent. This last impressed the duchess most, for she remembered her first meeting with the dowager. Her knees might show bruises to this day from knocking together so hard.

Lady Mayne also noted how Winifred kept looking to make sure the other sister took care of the general and the rest of the company. If her conversation wasn’t brilliant, well, even his doting mother never considered Brennan a mental giant. Incredible as it seemed, the chawbacon seemed to have found himself a pearl. And without his mother’s help. She waved the chit off to save him from a boring conversation with a Tulip in a bottle-green suit.

Before the duchess could spot her next quarry, the girl was curtsying to her, and winking! “Did she pass muster, Your Grace?” the brazen young woman was asking with a grin that showed perfect dimples under dancing eyes and curls that—ah, so that explained the bundle her son carried from place to place. Well, it did not really, so the duchess asked.

“My, ah, hair? I am sorry, Your Grace, but I really cannot explain that. I mean, I could, but I don’t think I should. I was somewhere I should not have been and Lord Mayne—the viscount, that is, not the duke—was there, too. And he helped. Oh, but you mustn’t think poorly of him for being there or, or for acting not quite the gentleman. About the hair, that is.”

Not quite the gentleman, her oh-so-proper son Forrest? The duchess was intrigued by the girl’s artlessness, and how she did not even seem aware that she was under scrutiny the same as her sister. “My dear,” the duchess said, patting her hand, “you have been without a mother too long if you think I could believe ill of my son. It is always some other mother’s progeny who is to blame.”

Sydney grinned again. “Do you know, your son feels the same way! Whenever he gets himself in a snit or a fit of the sullens, it always seems to be my fault.”

Tempers? Moods? The duchess wondered if they were speaking of the same person. Forrest was the most unprovokable man of her experience, and she had been trying for years. Oh, this was a chit after her own heart. “Miss Lattimore, do you like dogs?”

* * * *

The duchess returned home to inform the duke that he’d done just what he ought, and found their sons the perfect brides.

“Brilliant, my dear, brilliant,” she congratulated him over their pre-dinner sherry.

“I thought they didn’t have a feather to fly with.”

“Pooh, who’s talking about money? Of course nothing’s settled yet, so I might have to stay on in town to take a hand in matters after all.”

The duke pretended to study his ancestor’s portrait on the wall. “Might you, my dear?”

“Of course, I would need an escort sometimes, you know, to show we both countenanced the match. If that would not pull you away from your duties terribly.”

His Grace tossed back his wine and held out his arm to lead her in to dinner. “Family support is worth the sacrifice. You can count on me, my dear,” he said with a bow. His new corsets creaked only a little.

Chapter 23

Miss Lattimore . . . or Less

Viscount Mayne did not usually peek into the breakfast room before entering, but with the duchess in town, forewarned was forearmed. He’d rather go without his kippers and eggs than have his hair combed with a bowl of porridge so early in the morning. The duchess was smiling, though, and humming over her chocolate and some lists she was writing. He entered, careful to watch for the furry little beggars one always found lapping up crumbs in Her Grace’s breakfast parlor.

“Good morning, Mother,” he said, dropping a kiss on her bent head before helping himself at the sideboard. “I see you are keeping country hours. Did you sleep well or did the London noise awaken you?”

Oddly, she blushed. “I slept very well, thank you. I wished to speak with your father this morning before he left for his office.” The viscount looked around for pottery shards. “And you before you went on your usual ride.” Or escape hatches.

“I think I’ll just send for some fresh coffee,” he said, moving to the bellpull.

“It’s fresh, dearest. And so are the eggs, done just the way you like them. Sit. Oh, no, Forrest, I did not mean you. Pumpkin was trying to steal Prince Charlie’s bacon.”

Forrest excused himself. He was not particularly hungry any longer.

“But you cannot go until we’ve talked about my dinner party.”

“Are you staying in town long enough to throw a party, then? Father will be pleased.” He hoped so. He himself was planning on being busy that night, whichever night she chose. Lady Mayne’s London circle was the worst bunch of character assassins he ever met, meddlers and intriguers all. Now that the duchess was in London to look after Bren, perhaps Forrest could return to the peace and quiet of the countryside.

“Yes, I thought I would host a small gathering to introduce Miss Lattimore to our closest friends.”

He sat down in a hurry. Sydney at the mercy of those gossipmongers? Heaven knew what she would do if he wasn’t there to look after her. “Brennan told me you visited at Park Lane. So you mean to take them up?”

The duchess looked up from her lists. “Of course. That’s what you intended when you wrote me, wasn’t it? They’d be quite ruined if I were to cut the connection now, after the mull you made of introducing them. A friend of their mother’s, indeed! Lucky for you I even knew the peahen.”

Forrest waved that aside. “Then you don’t mind that Miss Lattimore hasn’t a feather to fly with?”

Lady Mayne set down her pencil. “I hope I have not raised my sons to think that money can buy happiness, for it cannot. Then, too, Brennan shall have an adequate income to provide for any number of wives.”

“And their families. You don’t think they could be fortune hunters, do you?”

“Stuff and nonsense. How could you look at that sweet girl and stay so cynical?” She frowned at him as if the idea never entered her mind. “I think she and her sister have done the best they could to keep themselves above oars, considering all the help they got from that cheeseparing aunt. Why, she has a houseful of underpaid servants, and her own nieces fetch and carry like maids. She must have a barn full of equipages, and they travel about in hired carriages! It’s the outside of enough, and I have already taken steps to see things changed. See how Lady Windham likes the ton knowing a near stranger has to frank her relations. The duke agrees.”

Forrest choked on a piece of toast. Now, that was a first, the Mainwarings agreeing about anything. Forrest could not help wondering how Sydney felt about his mother’s largess, with her prickly pride.

“I was
not
high-handed, Forrest. I let Bren manage it. She’s his intended, after all.”

“And you are reconciled to the match even though it is not a brilliant one?”

“Who says it is not? She is going to keep him happy and safe at home. What more could I want? And can you imagine what beautiful children they will have? I cannot wait to see if they are dark like Brennan or fair like Winifred.”

Forrest had a second helping of eggs. “I am relieved you found her so charming, Mother. I thought you would.”

“Yes, and I don’t even mind that she is an independent thinker and an original, either.”

“Independent? Winnie? If the girl had two thoughts to rub together, I never heard them.”

“Who said I was talking about Miss Lattimore? I am speaking of your Miss Sydney, who does not have more hair than wit. And if you did not send for me to get your ducks in a row with that refreshing young miss, I’ll eat my best bonnet.”

“She’s not refreshing, she’s exhausting. She is a walking disaster who is forever on the verge of some scandal.
That’s
why I sent for you, before she could ruin Winnie’s chances, too. Sydney is infuriating and devious and always up to her pretty little neck in mischief.”

“Yes, dear,” his mother said, bending over her lists, “that’s why you are top-over-trees in love with her.”

The fork hit the plate. “Me? In love with Sydney? Fustian! Who said anything about love? She’s a wild young filly who will never be broke to bridle, and I am too old to try.”

“Of course. That’s why you carry her hair from London to Sussex and back again.”

The viscount couldn’t keep his eyes from flashing upward. “Never tell me you check my rooms, Your Grace.”

“I didn’t have to, dear. You just told me.”

“I thought the hair upset you at the manor,” he said, praying that the warmth he felt was not showing as red on his face. “That’s all there is to it, by George.”

“Don’t swear, Forrest. You’ve been around your father too much. And don’t worry over being so blind you cannot recognize what your own heart is telling you. Your father never believed he loved me either until I told him. Just don’t wait too long, Forrest, for royalty won’t be too high for Miss Sydney when I am through.”

The coffee was bitter and the eggs were cold. Forrest put his plate on the floor for the dogs to squabble over and excused himself. “I am sure you and the housekeeper can work out all the details for your dinner party. Father’s new secretary seems a capable sort, too, but feel free to call on me if I can be of assistance.”

She was back at her lists before he reached the door. “Oh, by the way, Forrest,” she called when his hand touched the knob, “I gave Sydney a dog.”

The viscount’s hand fell to his side and his head struck the door. “Do you really hate me that much, Mother?”

* * * *

Did he love her? Not which horse should he ride, which route should he take to the park, just: Did he love her? Forrest controlled his mount through the traffic, galloped down the usual rides, cooled the chestnut gelding on tree-shaded pathways, all without noticing the other men also exercising their cattle or the nursemaids with their charges or the old ladies feeding the pigeons. He was lost in the center of London, lost in his thoughts.