“But, my lady,” Charles told her, with his most charming smile, “I most sincerely want you to.”
So great was Lady Clymore’s shock that if not for her cane and the steadying hand Charles hastily cupped around her elbow, she might have toppled over. “You do?”
“Yes, my lady, I—” Charles grinned suddenly. “Never mind. I shall save that phrase for the wedding.”
Chapter Sixteen
"There will be no wedding,” Betsy said, the very quietness of her voice doing more than a shout to underscore her resolve.
Charles did not miss it, but Lady Clymore did, for she made a quarter turn upon her cane and eyed her granddaughter as if she’d just sprouted another head. “What do you mean there will be no wedding? Of course there will. Braxton has offered for you."
“I have not accepted him, Granmama.” Betsy addressed herself exclusively and adamantly to the countess. “And I have no intention of doing so.”
“Of course you will! Have you lost your wits?”
“No, Granmama. I have not.” Betsy speared Charles with a pointedly brief look. “I realize I must save myself from Julian and have formed a plan to do so.”
“Indeed you have, miss,” Lady Clymore retorted forcefully. “The plan is that you will marry Braxton.”
“No, Granmama,” Betsy replied emphatically. “I will not be dictated to—by you or Julian or anyone else. I have control of my own destiny, and, according to Papa’s will, control of my fortune. It is mine to do with as I please.”
“You impertinent, disrespectful chit!” Lady Clymore shrilled, with a thump of her cane.
“I do not mean to be, Granmama, I mean only to be my own person. I have been confused and frightened, but am determined to be no longer.” Betsy’s voice broke and began to quaver. “I have been devious, as well, and my deceptions have cost me Boru.”
“You will have him back,” Charles put in feelingly. “If it’s the last thing I ever do, I’ll find, him for you."
“I think not, Your Grace.” Betsy drew a breath and continued. “I have made an oath on Boru’s memory to take myself back to Clymore. To the dower house, which is not entailed to Julian, where I will open a home for orphans.”
“And where will I live, goose?”
“You have this house,” Betsy reminded her grandmother, “and I will keep an apartment for you at Clymore, where you will be welcome whenever you wish to take the country air.”
“You are overset,” Lady Clymore informed her, and turned on her cane to smile at Charles. “Pay her no mind.” Then her ladyship cocked a stern eyebrow at Iddings. “What is this boy doing dripping puddles on my floor?”
“This is Davey.” Betsy stepped squarely into her grandmother’s line of vision. “And I am not overset.”
“Then you have run mad—and will make Braxton an excellent duchess!” Lady Clymore shock her cane threateningly. “Now take yourself off and change your gown before I beat some sense into you!”
Clutching the towel to his throat, the boy mewled again and swooned. Charles saw him crumple and dashed forward to catch him before he hit the floor. Dropping to his knees, he cradled the frail little form in his arms and felt his throat tighten at the sight of his protruding ribs.
“Now see what you’ve done!” Betsy rushed to Charles’s side, the little terrier whimpering at her heels. The hand she raised to Davey’s pale forehead shook visibly. “Is he—?” She bit her lip, unable to finish.
“He has merely fainted.” Charles rose with the boy in his arms. “You should have fed him before you tried to bathe him. I assume that’s why lie’s wet to the skin.”
“Y-yes,” Betsy admitted haltingly. “He kicked up an awful dust about the bath, you see. I—I tried to bribe him into the tub with a pasty.”
“I fear you have much to learn about orphans.” Charles chided her with a gentle smile and glanced a nod at the archway. “I trust the kitchen is through there?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“I’ll take ‘im, Yer Grace,” George said, stepping forward and holding out his arms.
“Kind of you,” Charles said, declining, “but he weighs hardly anything."
“This way, then, Your Grace.” Iddings sprang quickly ahead to lead the way.
Her lips parted in amazement, Betsy scooped up Scraps and trailed the butler, Charles, and George through the archway. Clearly she had just as much to learn about dukes as she did about orphans.
“Have your wits gone begging?” Lady Clymore screeched. When no one replied, she howled, “Then may the orphans take you all!”
By the time they reached the kitchen Davey had roused from his swoon, but Cook nearly fell into one at the sight of Quality invading her domain. She went rigid as the spit she turned and spots of color as bright as the flames dancing in her hearth burned in her ample cheeks.
“‘Ello again, guv,” Davey said, blinking and lifting his head from Charles’s shoulder.
“Hello, Davey. How d’you feel?”
“Bit on th’ rum side.”
“Have a sit, then.” Charles propped the boy in a wooden chair at Cook’s scrubbed top table and gave her a courteous bow. “Good evening, ma arm Might you have a meat pie or two for the lad?”
“I’ve this whole joint, m’lord,” Cook offered generously, “which her don’t need with her gouty foot.”
“You are too kind,” Charles replied, smothering a grin. “But I think a meat pie would be just the thing. What say you, Davey?”
“Lovely . . .“ The boy sighed, his eyes glistening.
While Cook scrambled to fill the duke’s request, Betsy fetched the scrap bowl usually saved for Boru. She put it down on the floor for the little terrier, rose, and watched Charles strip off his coat, help Davey into it, and roll the sleeves. With the towel, Charles dried the boy’s hair, then swung a chair backward to the table and set down before Davey a platter full of beef and sausage pies, a pudding sprinkled with cinnamon, a plate of cheese and fruit, and a crock of Cook’s own cider.
“S’all this fer me?” Davey asked, raising just his eyes from the table.
“I should say not.” Charles took a fat pie, a large bite, and began to chew.
Wriggling forward, Davey did the same. His bare ankles hooked together, his feet swinging against the rungs, he grinned at Charles with an overfull mouth.
“Rov’ry,” he said.
Charles swallowed and grinned back at him. “Lovely, indeed.” Then he poured the boy a cup full of cider.
Leaning forward to scratch Scraps behind the ears while he ate, Betsy sank onto the bench before the hearth. George brought a bowl of water for the dog, placed it carefully on the floor without spilling a drop, then donned his livery and gave himself over to Cook and Iddings and the task of serving Lady Clymore her supper.
The rapt expression on Betsy’s face while she watched Davey eat and the fire gleaming on her hair made swallowing difficult for Charles. A swig of cider helped, but not much. Bending his elbows on the table, he chanced a glance at her. When she didn’t look away, he smiled. She returned it tentatively.
“You seem much at home among pots and pans.”
“I often dine with the servants at the hall.”
Charles took an orange and began to peel it. “The kitchen’s much warmer and so is the company.”
“Do you not entertain?”
“’Tis difficult without a hostess,” Charles said, and cursed himself when Betsy ducked her head. “I manage a little when my mother is in residence, or whenever Lady Cromley can lend a hand.”
Betsy’s gaze lifted, just a bit too quickly for casual curiosity. “Lady Cromley?”
“My widowed neighbor. Her late husband’s estate marches with the hall.”
She smiled again, not quite so tentatively, showing a dimple in her left cheek Charles had never noticed before. The sight of it made him throb, break the orange apart, and offer her a section. She took it, popped it in her mouth, and pulled the bench closer to the table.
“How is it you know so much about orphans?”
“They abound in the country as well as the city. Caro—er, Lady Cromley, does what she can for them.”
He offered another piece of orange, which Betsy accepted readily. When she licked juice from her fingertips, Charles smothered a groan of longing.
“Your plan,” he said, his voice a bit deeper than usual, “seems well thought out but for one not so small detail. You can’t possibly believe Dameron will abandon his pursuit of you merely because you wish to devote your life to saving orphans.”
“For that reason alone, no. But when I offer him a generous quarterly allowance, yes.” Betsy gave him a shyly sly smile. “I wish I’d thought of it at Clymore, for we need never have come to town at all.”
“Do you not like London?”
“I do not. I love the country. But I was so unhappy when Papa died, and in such a panic when Julian began hectoring me, I allowed Granmama to convince me that throwing myself on the marriage mart was my only hope.”
She said no more, but her thinking was clear to Charles: If she’d stayed at Clymore, she would still have Boru.
“Your plan is clever but costly. I have a cheaper one.”
A wary gleam came into Betsy’s eyes. “What is that?”
"Not what you think. I am not Dameron. I do not force unwilling females into marriage.”
“But I didn’t mean—” she began, flushing and lowering her eyes when Charles cocked an eyebrow. “Yes, I did mean, and I apologize.” Betsy looked up at him. “You were saying, Your Grace?”
“I do wish you would call me Braxton,” Charles said exasperatedly. “My lord, if you must, but anything, please, save Your Grace. It makes me feel the veriest antique.”
Betsy eyed him consideringly for a moment, then said, “As you wish, my lord.”
She was still wary, still not quite at ease with him. After the way he’d behaved in Hyde Park, Charles didn’t blame her. As one offers a tidbit to a dog to gain its trust—an insulting analogy but the first that came to mind—Charles offered her the last orange slice.
“I was saying that so long as Dameron thinks we are betrothed he will be forced to look elsewhere for an heiress.”
“And you truly think he believes your offer?”
The dubious tone of her voice made it clear that she did not. Not yet, at any rate. But by heaven, Charles vowed, she would. And he would know if she truly cared for him.
“I do, and am certain that whatever doubts he might have will vanish once he reads the announcement in the Times.”
Betsy swallowed hard, the orange thudding like a rock into her stomach. “What announcement?”
“Why, the announcement of our engagement, of course.”
“I should have known!” Betsy shot to her feet.
“Kindly allow me to finish,” Charles retorted, springing out of his chair. “I merely propose we maintain the facade until Clymore finds himself another fortune. Then you may cry off with no harm done."
Betsy’s eyes widened incredulously. “No harm done!”
“Not a whit’s worth. Engagements are made to be broken. Why, the newspapers are full of retractions. Everyone will think you have merely come to your senses, that is all, for half the ton already believes me to be as dotty as His Poor Majesty.”
“I should have known,” Betsy repeated, her voice quavering and tinged with bitterness.
The unshed tears shimmering in her eyes gave Charles an almost physical pain, but he held resolutely to his course. “What should you have known?”
“That it was all a hum,” Betsy retorted quickly, realizing—Praise God—that she’d come dangerously close to revealing her true feelings. “Which I knew, of course.”
The hollow laugh she gave didn’t fool Charles, rather it exhilarated him. Nearly to the point that he scooped her up in his arms, but mindful of Davey’s avidly upturned face, he restrained himself. She deserved wooing, did this gentle, kind-hearted Aphrodite, and she would have it. Beginning tomorrow night at the Countess Featherston’s ball.
“I am glad you were not deceived,” he replied. “Pity Lady Clymore was, but there’s nothing for it now.
“You were quite brilliant, my lord.” Betsy forced her shaky knees to bend, and once she was reseated on the bench, forced her brightest smile. “I nearly believed you myself.”
“Ah, but you are far too intelligent to be so easily gulled. Which, of course, I recognized the instant I read the note you enclosed with my coat.”
If he’d called her Aphrodite again Betsy couldn’t have been more stricken—or more grateful that she was sitting down. “I fear I must apologize for that, as well. At the time I was rather vexed with you, my lord.”
“You had every reason to be, just as I did to be vexed with you at Lady Pinchon’s rout.”
“I knew that you were, but I still have no idea why."
“It was silly of me to believe him—I see that now and admit it freely—but just that afternoon Teddy had told me he planned to elope with you to Gretna.”
“Yes, I know.” Betsy felt herself flush and hoped Charles would acquit it to her proximity to the fire. “But did he explain to you why?”
“Yes, after I threatened to choke him.”
From the corner of his eye, Charles saw Davey’s jaws stop working. Making a note to omit any references to physical violence from his conversation when in the boy’s presence, he shot him a hasty but warm smile.
“That is merely a figure of speech, Davey. Teddy is my youngest brother. I would never really choke him."
But I might, Betsy thought vengefully, imagining the fists clenched in her lap around Teddy’s throat.
“Teddy’s confession gave me the idea of telling Dameron we’d come to an understanding in the first place,” Charles said sincerely. “In the second, it seemed the very least I could do to make amends for causing you to lose Boru.”
“You are not responsible, my lord, I am,” Betsy countered swiftly. “It was my idea to use Boru to chase Julian away. I placed him in jeopardy and I— I will have to live with that the rest of my life.”
Then she caught her lip between her teeth and lowered her chin again. Where the firelight touched her hair it shimmered like molten gold.
“I believe we are both at fault for things beyond the loss of Boru,” Charles said gently, “and it. is my most sincere wish that we begin our acquaintanceship anew.”
Her chin shot up, just a hair too quickly for his liking. “To what end?”
“I wish nothing more than to be your friend,” Charles told her. At least for the moment, he added to himself.