When the Duke Returns (Desperate Duchesses #4)

When the Duke Returns (Desperate Duchesses #4) Page 24

“Will your personal maid be arriving in the later carriages?”

“Yes, Lucille experiences stomach problems when she travels, so she generally follows me in a slow-moving carriage. If it were possible, I would love a bath. I’m quite dusty from the journey.”

“I’ll set up a hot bath as soon as the maids have finished. If you’re quite certain that you’re comfortable…” He lingered, obviously disturbed by the idea of leaving her.

But Isidore was already opening up a book. “I shall be perfectly happy here, Honeydew. Truly. Please send the dowager duchess my regrets that I cannot greet her due to the absence of my maid.”

She had a sudden thought. “Do you know, I believe that I am strangely fatigued by my journey.” She smiled at the butler, who had the discretion not to indicate that she seemed in the utter pink of health. “I shall dine here tonight.”

He bowed.

“I should be honored if the duke would disrupt his schedule and join me,” she added. “Quite informally, of course. He needn’t wear a cravat.”

Honeydew’s eyes were smiling, even if his face kept to a servantlike solemnity. “Just so, Your Grace. I shall inform him.” He bowed again. “May I add that your generosity as regards His Grace’s attire will be greatly appreciated?”

Chapter Fourteen

Revels House

February 29, 1784

“Her Grace is in the Dower House,” Honeydew informed the duke. “The maids have been to clean, and she seems quite comfortable. We started a fire in the grate. The walls are damp, and it should quickly take away the chill.”

The duke looked up from the letter he was writing and dragged a hand through his hair. “Really? Because of the stench? I think I must be getting used to it, Honeydew.”

“No, Your Grace. The air is somewhat drier than it was this morning and it’s not so obvious. But we are due for more rain tonight, or so Mr. Sumerall, the gardener, has told me.”

“She’s well out of it, then,” the duke said, looking exhausted.

“The duchess requests that you dine with her in the Dower House,” Honeydew said. In his estimation, the duchess wasn’t coming back into the main house until the water closets were cleaned. Even if Mr. Kinnaird managed to find cleaning men in London—and given the amount of money that the duke had given him, he ought to—Honeydew thought that they wouldn’t arrive for a day or two.

Besides, Honeydew was discovering he had alarmingly affectionate feelings toward the young duke who worked all day and half the night, and who was paying everyone, honest and true. The whole countryside was talking about it. A year ago he couldn’t find a ripe melon without ready money, but now offers were flowing from all sides.

“This Mr. Purfew who claims to have done great service for the late duke,” the duke said. “Do you have any idea who that might be, Honeydew?”

Honeydew pursed his lips. “It doesn’t ring a bell. There was a Pursloe—”

The duke turned to an enormous ledger that lay open to his right. “I’ve already noted a payment to Pursloe, made yesterday, for four wigs purchased by my father ten years ago, payment refused on the grounds that they were too old-fashioned.”

Honeydew judged it best to be silent.

But the duke smiled faintly. “I suspect my father was buried in one of those old-fashioned wigs?”

“I believe, sir, that there should be a letter thereabouts from a London wigmaker named Mr. Westby, who made the burial wig. It was His Grace’s favorite.”

The smile fell from the duke’s face and he looked to his ledger with a sigh. “I haven’t found Westby’s letter, Honeydew. But I attempted to take a nap at one point and discovered a great trove of letters propping up the leg of the sofa. When you get a moment, could you have the footmen remove that sofa? It’s beyond repair.”

Honeydew saw that the velvet, claw-footed sofa had lurched to the ground, minus a leg. Moreover a sprinkle of straw haloed the floor around it, showing that its innards were openly disintegrating. He felt a rush of embarrassment. “I am sorry that—your father wouldn’t—”

The duke held up his hand. “There’s no need,” he said wearily. “Truly. I am learning the depths of my father’s stubbornness letter by letter and I can only admire you for staying in your post. I have instructed Kinnaird to double your wages; consider it hardship pay.”

Honeydew drew himself upright. “I thank you, Your Grace.” Happy visions of retirement and a small cottage danced before his eyes. Then he returned to the subject at hand. It seemed to him quite odd that the duke and duchess were married, and yet not married. Not to mention sleeping, quite obviously, in different quarters.

What was needed was to create some good old-fashioned propinquity.

“Her Grace has requested supper to be served in the Dower House,” he said. “I shall set a cover for you.”

The duke nodded. But then, as Honeydew was leaving, he looked up from his desk and said, “Don’t forget to ask Godfrey to join us.”

Godfrey? A thirteen-year-old joining the intimate dinner between a barely married man and wife? Honeydew could not approve.

“I shall ascertain whether the young master is free to join you,” he said, vowing to make quite certain that Godfrey was occupied.

“Of course, I’m free,” piped up a voice from the other side of the room.

“Lord Godfrey!”

The boy’s brown curls popped up from the far side of yet another faded sofa. “I haven’t even met the duchess.”

“I didn’t know you were still there,” the duke said, smiling at his brother. “One hour more and I’m dragging you out on the roads for a run, Godfrey.”

Defeated, Honeydew bowed and departed.

Chapter Fifteen

The Dower House

February 29, 1784

Isidore prepared her cottage with great care. A small army of housemaids cleaned it from floor to rafters. Then she sent two of the most capable-looking ones searching all over Revels House for bits of furniture.

By the end of the afternoon, she had her little dollhouse made up a trifle more comfortably. Candles shone all over the room. Upholstered chairs replaced the unpadded armchairs favored by the late dowager duchess. There was a vase of snowdrops that Isidore gathered in the garden, and the bed (large enough for two) was made up with snowy white linens and piled with pillows.

It was still a doll’s house, but polished to a high gleam and smelling deliciously of French lilacs (thanks to some very expensive parfum), it spoke of creature comforts.

And seduction.

The footmen arrived with a small dining room table and Isidore had them move it twice before she decided the best place for it was in the corner of the sitting room, where she and Simeon would eat in a mysterious, slightly shadowed intimacy.

She sent a suggested menu to Honeydew, including hot, spiced wine that she could prepare herself at fireside.

She could just picture it: the duke with his broad shoulders, his jacket thrown open and his hair tumbling to his shoulders. She would play the immaculate, utterly delicious wife. If what he wanted was English womanhood in all its delicate docility, she could do that.

It was like a favorite story that she had already read, and now got to enact. The Taming of the Wild Man…