Somerville Farce (12 page)

Willie, a hand to one ear, cocked his head
toward the door. “Did you hear that, Harry? That was the dinner
bell—I’m sure of it. And here I am, not even dressed for dinner.
Harry, you know what a stickler Queen Amelia is whenever I try to
come to table dressed in my dirt. Poor dear. I wouldn’t want to
upset her, would you? Well, I guess I’ll have to be off. Trixy,
you’ll explain everything, won’t you?”

The duke sat up, leaning on his elbows.
“William, you traitor, come back in here this—uuummff!”

“There you go,” Trixy said in obvious
triumph, spooning another measure of broth into Harry’s gaping
mouth. “Now, isn’t that good?”

The duke bit down on the spoon and pulled it
free of Trixy’s hand, the movement causing his dark hair to tumble
down over his eyes. A moment later, the spoon still sticking from
his mouth, the bowl of broth hit the far wall, having been hurled
there by Harry himself. Two moments later, and the spoon had joined
the bowl on the floor.

“There!” he declared forcefully. “Now,
madam, unless you’d enjoy following where your broth has led, I
most earnestly suggest that you tell me why my cook has been
banished to London, a place, I might point out, in which I—his
employer—am not currently in residence.”

Trixy looked down pointedly at Glynde’s
hand, which was at that moment wrapped rather tightly around her
forearm, then gazed into his face and smiled.

“Since you asked so nicely, your grace,” she
said sweetly, “I should be happy to enlighten you. When last you
went to London, Angelo was mightily dismayed by the state of your
kitchens. The thought of enduring an entire Season working on your
antiquated stove all but reduced the man to tears—Italians are so
emotional, you understand.”

“I don’t believe this,” Harry muttered under
his breath, mourning the loss of his cook. “Go on—you might as well
tell me the whole of it.”

“Your aunt and I, fearful that the man might
hand in his resignation—Lady Amelia having already told me of your
great affection for Angelo’s way with pastries—immediately
suggested a renovation at the mansion. Angelo agreed, with the
stipulation that he himself oversee the project.” Trixy shrugged
her shoulders. “Simple, isn’t it, once it’s explained? Will you
release me now or is there something else I can help you with,
Harry?”

Glynde’s grip on her arm did not slacken,
and when he spoke again, his voice was low and intense. “You’ve
taken over, haven’t you, Trixy? I don’t know how you’ve done it—I’m
not even sure
why
you’ve done it—but you have moved in,
unwanted, and completely taken over my household.”

Trixy returned his stare levelly. “Yes,
Harry, I imagine you might believe that. But what else was I to do?
Your aunt was all but hysterical after your accident, and the girls
had to be considered. Surely you don’t believe Lord William to be
capable of running Glyndevaron?”

The duke’s grip intensified. “Running
Glyndevaron? What do you mean by that? I was speaking of my
kitchens, my staff. My God, woman, I’ve been laid up for only three
days. What else are you doing—supervising the farms? Ordering barns
built? Directing my man of business?”

Trixy made to hit his hand away, to no
avail. “Now you’re being ridiculous,” she accused, finally showing
some sign of anger. “None of this was my idea. Let me go so that I
can clean up the mess you’ve made with your childish temper, before
the broth seeps entirely into the carpet.”

Glynde’s next words stopped her cold. “Oh,
dear me—poor, poor Miss Beatrice Stourbridge. She didn’t want any
of this; none of this was her idea. It is true, then, madam, what
Shakespeare wrote—that not all of us are born to greatness. Some of
us, like you, poor thing, must have greatness thrust upon them.” He
gave her arm a small shake. “Did you really believe that I came
down in the last rain, Trixy, that I should swallow such
nonsense?”

Her eyes flashed emerald fire for a
second—at the precise moment he had referred to her as Beatrice
—before her lids came down, masking her expression. “I don’t care a
fig one way or the other what you believe, Harry,” she told him
quietly. “I hatched a plot—a terrible, flaw-riddled plot born of
desperation—which failed almost immediately, stranding me in the
middle of nowhere. Left with the twins to care for, and without
another choice, I am now only following your orders, hopeful of
ending this farce with the happy settlement of my charges and a few
good prospects for future employment for myself.”

Harry looked up at her, liking the faint
color that filled her cheeks, enjoying the way her modestly covered
breasts heaved in reaction to her obvious perturbation, feeling
stirred by her proximity next to him on the bed. “Trixy, I—” he
began, only to be cut off.

“It was not I who spooked Myles Somerville
into running off to Ireland,” she continued, unaware of his grace’s
change of mood from the angry to the amorous, “leaving his girls
behind to fend for themselves. It was not I who had so little
control of my hey-go-mad brother and his equally industrious bosom
chum that they were left loose long enough to kidnap Eugenie and
Helena. It was not I who hatched this absurd plan of your
sponsoring the girls for the Season. It was not I who wouldn’t
listen to reason, but went skating off to play tricks on thin ice
without so much as testing it beforehand. It was not I who took to
my bed like some spoiled child, acting as if I were carrying the
weight of the world upon my shoulders. It was not I who—”

“Oh, for the love of heaven, Trixy, shut
up!” Harry exploded when he couldn’t bear listening to her recital
of his failings for another moment, and he dragged her down on top
of him to put a halt to her protestations with his kiss.

I
diot! She was an
idiot. There was no other word for it. How else could she describe
herself? What other label could she—or anyone—put on a female who
allowed a man, a near-stranger, actually, to kiss her? And in his
own bed, for pity’s sake. In his very own bed!

Trixy pushed the drawer shut on the last of
her clothing and turned away from the armoire in disgust. Perhaps a
better question would be: why was she still berating herself for
that kiss three weeks later, with the whole lot of them finally
installed in the Glynde mansion in Portman Square?

Indeed, why was she even continuing to think
about it at all? Lord knew, Harry seemed to have forgotten the
embrace had ever happened—or at least it certainly seemed that
way.

Trixy perched on the edge of the bed, still
having barely taken notice of her comfortable room, and relived yet
again those terrible, wonderful moments in Harry’s arms. It had not
been her first kiss, for after all, she was not a child.

She had been kissed before—although perhaps
Darryl Findley, the assistant curate at St. Hilda’s, hadn’t had
quite the equivalent experience of the duke, whose kiss had
certainly been as different from Darryl’s hasty, sloppy clash of
lips against teeth as was watered milk from thick, luscious
cream.

No, Darryl had a lot to learn about kissing,
if Harry’s example was any indication of expertise in the exercise.
Pressing a hand to her lips, her eyes closed, Trixy relived yet
again the heady sensations that had exploded throughout her body as
Harry had moved his mouth on hers.

Harry’s mouth had been one thing—that
greedy, searching, all-consuming, all-knowing mouth—but even more
debilitating at the time had been the intimate press of his body
against hers, his firm nightshirt-clad body, and the strength of
his arms as they had held her to him.

Trixy jumped up from the bed to go to the
single window that, because hers was one of the minor family
chambers in the mansion, looked out over the mews, and stared at
the scene outside without really seeing it, for her traitorous mind
continued to insist upon concentrating on the scene in the
Glyndevaron bedchamber.

Somehow, some way, she had to find a way to
erase this dangerous memory from her mind.

During the day it was easy enough to
do—almost as easy as it was to believe that she hated and detested
Henry Lyle Augustus Townsend. His muttered curse and hasty
dismissal of her as he had abruptly broken off the kiss was only
one of the reasons why she should have had no trouble in banishing
the man as well as the incident from her mind.

Not content with having humiliated her—for
what else could his kiss have been if not a punishment for her
audacity in saving him from drowning? (if she had it to do over
again, she would stand on the shore waving her handkerchief at him
and blowing kisses while watching him sink to the bottom of the
pond like a stone) —he had risen from his sickbed that very day to,
as he had announced at the time to all who would listen, “take back
the reins of command before the enterprising Miss Stourbridge makes
the lot of you believe she is indispensable.”

From the moment of that sarcastic
pronouncement, there had existed an undeclared state of war between
Trixy and the duke—and so far, it appeared that the duke was
winning.

Not yet fully recovered from his dousing in
the pond, he had taken complete control of the plans for the Season
with a vengeance, sticking his still-sniffling aristocratic nose
into everything from the number of gowns each twin would need to
exactly which simpering French dancing master should be employed to
instruct the girls in the newly popular, though sometimes
scandalously regarded waltz.

Once he had sent off the announcement to the
newspapers telling of their expected official arrival date in the
metropolis—which was set for exactly six weeks after they actually
took up residence, leaving time for the modiste he had chosen to
make up the wardrobes—Harry had figuratively doffed his cap to the
lot of them and promptly departed for London and Angelo’s roast
beef.

Trixy liked to comfort herself with the
notion that he had run away, unable to face her after what had
passed between them in his chamber, but it was difficult to
convince herself that, in truth, he had been affected by it at all.
No, she couldn’t make herself believe that Harry lay awake night
after night weaving romantic fantasies, as she did. If he had run
away in order to flee his memory of their embrace, it was because
the mere thought of it disgusted him. Consider this: do men who
find themselves suddenly besotted with a woman curse at the end of
a kiss? Trixy thought it highly unlikely.

And what further proof did she need of his
extreme disinterest than the fact that the traveling party had
pulled up in Portman Square only to find that his grace, who had
chanced upon a few friends passing through London on their way
north, had joined them for a visit in Bury St. Edmunds and wasn’t
expected back until the very night of the ball he had planned for
the twins’ come-out.

Trixy leaned her forehead against the cold
windowpane. “Six weeks until I see him again,” she said quietly.
“Six weeks of constant headaches, of outfitting Eugenie and Helena
while trying to keep Andy and Willie from falling into every trap
set for unwary, green-as-grass boys out on a spree, and six weeks
of maintaining a delicate balance with Lady Amelia, who must
continue to believe Harry is in love with me while understanding
that this knowledge is to remain our particular secret. Added to
that, I must cajole Angelo, keep Pinch from scaring off the newly
hired servants, and somehow accomplish all the various chores Harry
has left me on his abominable lists.”

She turned away from the window with a
heartfelt sigh. “If nothing else, by the time Harry finally finds
his way back to Portman Square, I’ll be too exhausted to be nervous
about facing him again.”

Six weeks. Harry slammed the lid shut on an
array of rings and other masculine jewelry. Six weeks before he
would look in Beatrice Stourbridge’s soulful green eyes once more
and see... what? Hatred? Disgust? Disdain? Hurt?
Disillusionment?