Eloisa James - Desperate Duchesses - 6 (9 page)

"Like to see
you
a butler!" the groom said, guffawing as he would at any beggar who expressed the same wish.

"I'll make it someday," Tobias said, putting on the brave and cheerful face of an orphan. "I don't mind hard work. That's why I'm trying to help today."

"You'd best get on with it, then," the groom said, waving him on.

"Could I do something for you, next?" Tobias asked. "Hold the horses for a moment, maybe? I do love horses."

"I could take a piss," the man said. "Bring that there blanket to Ashmole and come back here, smart-like."

"Yes, sir," Tobias said, pulling the blanket out of its place and trotting up the steps back to the house. 'Course, it wasn't a normal blanket. It was soft as a baby's backside, and trimmed in some sort of fur. Ermine or suchlike. He handed the blanket to the footman stationed in the hallway and told him that it was to be sent to the laundry.

"You shouldn't be using the front steps like that," the groom told him a moment later, as he handed over the reins. "Ashmole will whup you if he sees you at it."

"I think he said something about that," Tobias said vaguely, stroking one of the horses' noses.

"I'll be back in a minute," the man said, heading around the side of the building. "Mr. Seffle will be coming to drive the coach around the block again. Doesn't like the horses to get antsy."

The moment he disappeared around the side of the building, Tobias called to the footman just inside the door. When he appeared, Tobias shouted, "Tell Mr. Seffle I took the horses around the block."

By the time the duke's coachman, Seffle, rushed around the side of the house, Tobias was already hidden in the coach. The horses hadn't even had time to realize that they were free to trot off. From inside the blanket box, Tobias could faintly hear Seffle swearing, followed by a shouting match between Seffle and the groom and the ensuing search for himself, but after a few minutes it all settled down and Seffle jumped on the coach to drive it around the block.

Tobias wasn't overly uncomfortable. He could sit with his arms clasped around his legs. They trundled around the final corner and pulled to a halt again. He heard the duke's drawling voice. "Are you saying that Ashmole asked my son to run errands for him?"

Tobias couldn't help grinning. He hadn't made up his mind about his father. Villiers was like some sort of weird exotic bird with nasty eyes and a strange way of talking. He wasn't friendly. Or warm.

But Tobias still thought about the way Villiers had knocked over Grindel, the man who forced him to root around in the mud to pick up things like human teeth. Grindel had hit the ground with an enormous crash. And now there was atone in Villiers's voice that said Ashmole was in danger of losing his job if he confused Tobias with a footman.

Villiers seemed to think he could make everyone forget that his son was a bastard. Which was idiotic, though Tobias appreciated the thought.

Finally the coach lurched to a start. Tobias planned to wait until they were on the outskirts of London before he announced his presence. But they couldn't have gone more than a block when the wooden roof over his head suddenly flew open.

He raised his head slowly, and met his father's eyes. He had learned long ago to stay silent in awkward situations, so he said nothing.

Unfortunately, it seemed his father adhered to the same lesson, and after an uncomfortable moment Tobias couldn't take it any longer. "Ashmole didn't ask me to do an errand for him. How did you know I was in here?"

The duke arched an eyebrow. "A blanket carried into the house followed by a missing boy hardly posed much of a conundrum. And there was the fire in the nursery as well."

Tobias climbed out of the blanket box, pushing the flap back down. Surely the duke would shout to the coachman, stop the carriage, and send him back in the care of the furious groom, who would likely give him a clip on the ear, if not worse.

But his father said nothing at all, simply turning his eyes to a small book he held in his hands.

After a while Tobias asked, "Aren't you going to send me back?"

The duke looked up. "I assume that you have some desire to accompany me."

Tobias opened his mouth, but Villiers raised a hand. "You needn't embellish. I gather that after a few years chasing through a muddy riverbed in danger of life and limb, you find the nursery tedious.

I suspect," he added, "that the addition of a six-year-old girl to that nursery has not improved matters."

"She was quite good this morning," Tobias said fairly.

"Ah, the fire. I do wish that you had told her that the embroidery samplers from the west wall were not for burning. Ashmole seems quite distressed by their demise. They were over one hundred years old."

"Probably moldy, then," Tobias pointed out. "I didn't specify the sort of fuss she should make. I would have told her not to burn Colin's book."

"She burned
all
the books in the nursery," Villiers remarked.

Tobias didn't believe in apologizing, as a matter of course. But somehow he found his mouth opening and something along those lines emerging.

Villiers merely shrugged. "We'll have to watch her on Guy Fawkes Night."

Tobias began to feel more comfortable. "Are we really going to Kent to meet your wife?"

"She's not my wife yet. I'll choose whichever of the two women seems likely to be the better mother to the lot of you."

"I don't need a mother," Tobias said.

"Violet does." His father turned a page. "And so do the twins. They are much younger than you."

"Boys or girls?" "Girls."

"Did you know that I was a boy?" "Yes."

"What was my mother like?" "Extremely pretty."

Tobias froze, hoping that he would continue. But Villiers turned another page.

"You're being an ass," Tobias said, dropping the words into the silence of the carriage with great precision.

At first his father didn't move. Then he looked up again. "Am I to gather you believe this is an unusual occurrence, or merely that I should be concerned by your assessment?"

"Why didn't you marry my mother?" But he knew. He knew even as he asked it.

"I didn't marry your mother because she was an opera singer, and my mistress. She was also Italian, and quite beautiful, and rather mad. She was not a lady in the strict sense of the word."

Tobias hated him, from the tip of his polished boots to the sheen of his heavy silk coat.

"She didn't care to rear you," Villiers said, putting his book down. "She was not a ^

motherly type. But she thought you were beautiful." "How do you know?"

"Unlike the other children, you were born on my estate. She was on tour through England, and when her confinement interrupted that tour, she and the rest of the troupe stayed with me."

"In the house? With Ashmole?"

"With Ashmole, but at one of my country estates."

Tobias couldn't imagine that. "Did you ever see her again?"

Villiers looked at him straight in the eyes. "She was a very famous opera singer, Tobias."

Tobias felt his blood running cold. But it was no more than he already knew, had ^

known for years. There was no one for him in the world.

"She died in Venice of an ague. She had stayed out too late after singing a special concert for the doge."

Tobias shrugged. "She means nothing to me. Just a doxy who was too pretty to wed."

His father met his eyes until Tobias dropped his. "She thought I would keep you safe. You should be angry at me, if anyone."

"If it's all right with you, I shall take a nap," Tobias said, closing his eyes.

He thought he heard his father say, "Toushay." What did that mean, Toushay?

Knole House, country residence of the Duke of Gilner

Late afternoon

June 17, 1784

The Duke of Gilner's estate lay deep in the green hills of Kent. It was a square house with aggressively symmetrical wings, the whole of it arranged with every bit of mathematical rigor that could be summoned to the task. Windows marched around the wings like soldiers on parade. And yet...

If everything about the house celebrated the ideals of reason and rationality, the rest of the estate seemed to express the opposite. The gardens and the avenue had undoubtedly been calculated with algebraic excellence. Years ago, trees probably marched down that avenue at precisely calibrated intervals. Moreover, those trees had been chosen for their melancholy regularity, like the tall skinny mourning trees that surrounded Italian cemeteries.

But now the geometric skill of the architect was defeated by chaos. The avenue had begun with a series of oaks, now grown to stately proportions. A few had been lost to wind or were cut down.

Missing oaks had been replaced with a beech here and an apple tree there. A short squat tree that looked like nothing so much as a claret bottle tipped gently to the right between two dignified trunks.

And the grounds! Worse and worse. Someone had apparently planned a hedge maze to the right of the house. Eleanor could see the vestiges of its lanes and alleys, but the hedges had withered and been cut down in places. A ramshackle cottage off to the left might have been called a folly, but only by those who were truly charitable. The untidiness of it all was exacerbated by several faded archery targets. They were stuck around the

lawn with a permanent look to them; one had a rambler growing up its post.

"The estate looks even more disreputable than I remember," she said, stepping down from the carriage with the help of a groom. "Why did we stop visiting? I remember when we used to pay a visit every year. Did you and Lisette's mother quarrel?"

"Of course not! As if I would ever be so ill-bred as to quarrel with someone," her mother replied, magnificently ignoring the many squabbles that enlivened her days. "And certainly not with poor Beatrice. I was one of her dearest friends; we were presented in the same year. And then when we both became duchesses, well..."

"What happened?" Anne prompted, hopping out of the carriage. "Goodness me, I'm happy to be out of that vehicle."

"Lisette is a few years older than Eleanor," her mother said, gesturing to one of the ^

grooms, who trotted off to bang the knocker. The household appeared not to have noticed the arrival of a coach-and-four on the drive, let alone the second coach carrying three maids and a quantity of trunks. "There was a catastrophe. Beatrice quite lost heart, and when she was carried off with pneumonia a mere year later, I knew the real cause."

"What catastrophe?" Eleanor asked patiently. The footman was thumping the knocker but apparently having no success.

The duchess hesitated. "It's all very well for Anne to know, since she's married. Though I suppose you're a woman now."

"I have been reconciled to that status for several years," Eleanor said.

"How queer you are," the duchess snapped. "Well, I'll make it blunt, then. Lisette formed an unfortunate attachment to a gentleman."

"She never seemed very interested when we were girls," Anne observed.

"That could be due to the fact that she is unable to hold an interest in any subject for more than a day or two," Eleanor pointed out. "It's hard to imagine a man holding sway. She certainly never mentioned anything in her letters. Although to be fair, she has developed what seems to be a long-

term interest in helping orphaned children."

"I blame Beatrice," their mother said darkly. "I have done my duty by you girls. Neither of you would ever shame me by an illicit liaison." She shuddered.

"Was the gentleman ineligible?" Eleanor asked, thinking it best to draw her mother's attention quickly away from the putative chastity of her own daughters.

"I shall never reveal that," the duchess announced, taking on the tone of a martyr facing a hostile crowd. "I promised Beatrice that I would take the truth to my grave. But—" ^ She relented suddenly, lowering her voice, "I will tell you that the child—"

"Child!" Eleanor exclaimed. "You didn't say there'd been a child!"

"I said a catastrophe," her mother replied. "And believe me, in cases such as these, the words are one and the same. We shall speak no more of it. Look at this house! Beatrice would be horrified by the muddle. But I am not one to criticize; I understand the difficulty of keeping household help." It was certainly true that the duchess's acerbic comments had a tendency to drive said household help straight out of said household.

Finally the groom's repeated bangs on the door produced a response. A butler was trotting down the main steps, bowing slightly from the waist as he came, as if he wanted to get a head start on his salutations.

"Your Grace," he said, swinging into a deep bow like a marionette. "This is such a pleasure, such a pleasure. I'm afraid that the Duke of Gilner is not at home, but I shall send him a message."

"Absolutely not," Eleanor's mother declared with a wave of the hand. "I didn't come to see Gilner, but his daughter. This is nothing more than a pleasant little visit, a matter of a few days at the most.

Between friends."

Because the butler was still blinking at her rather than escorting them directly into the house, she said, "Lady Lisette is in residence, is she not?"

"Of course," he said, "but I'm afraid that Lady Marguerite is paying a visit to a relative. She'll be back tomorrow afternoon."

"Well, then, bring us to our chambers so that we can refresh ourselves after this journey," the duchess commanded. "It may be only a few hours from London, but you would not countenance the dust. At one point I thought I was sure to suffocate."

Eleanor was interested to see how distressed the butler appeared to be. He was literally wringing his hands. "Perhaps there are no free chambers?" she inquired.

He rushed into speech. Apparently, there were more than enough chambers, but in Lady Marguerite's absence—

Her mother lost her patience immediately and waved him quiet. "Eleanor, did I not instruct you to write a note announcing our visit?"

"I did, Mother. Perhaps Lady Lisette neglected to inform you?" Eleanor said, giving the butler a smile.