Duchess in Love Read online

  Eloisa James

  Duchess in Love

  Contents

  1

  A Brief Conversation The Duchess of Girton’s Bedchamber

  2

  An Encounter Between a Duke, a Piglet, and a Solicitor

  3

  Family Politics

  4

  Domestic Pleasures

  5

  Troubridge Manor, Crammed with Company and Giddy with Grandees

  6

  A Meeting of Spouses

  7

  The Afflictions of Memory Following Lady Troubridge’s Ridotto

  8

  In Which Beautiful Men Frolic by the River

  9

  A Slab of Pink Marble and a Contemplative Duke

  10

  The Fruits of Regret

  11

  Improper Shakespeare, in the Library

  12

  In Which the Marquess of Bonnington Suffers an Insult

  13

  Tasting Rain

  14

  The Truth Is Sometimes Displeasing

  15

  A Duchess in Dishabille

  16

  The Bedchamber of a Spurned Woman

  17

  In Which Desire Comes to the Forefront

  18

  Houseguests Need Not Rise Before Noon

  19

  A Piscatory Discussion on the Riverbank

  20

  In Which the Question of Marital Beds and Bedchambers Comes to the Fore

  21

  A Scandalized Solicitor

  22

  Lady Helene, Countess Godwin, Escapes an Unpleasant Experience in the City

  23

  A Brazen Challenge and an Injured Jawbone

  24

  The Second Council of War

  25

  In Which Mr. Finkbottle Proves Himself a Worthy Employee

  26

  Cabined, Cribbed, and Confined, as Hamlet Put It

  27

  Lady Troubridge’s Plunge-Bath, a Dark but Not Unpleasant Habitat

  28

  Mr. Rounton Defends His Heritage

  29

  Informal Dancing Followed by Private Intoxication

  30

  Courage Is Required: Lord Perwinkle’s Bedchamber

  31

  Curtain Call

  32

  Regret Is a Morning Affair

  33

  The Following Afternoon a Solicitor’s Creativity Is Deplored

  34

  Lady Rawlings Awaits Her Husband

  35

  Just Before Dawn

  36

  Sometimes a Wife Cannot Be Found

  37

  In Which a Duchess Dances for Joy

  38

  The Grand Staircase, Girton House

  Epilogue

  A Note on the Rarest of Marital Surprises: Of Recognition and Annulment

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  A Brief Conversation

  The Duchess of Girton’s Bedchamber

  Lady Troubridge’s House Party

  East Cliff

  “Well, what does he look like?”

  There was a pause. “He has black hair, I remember that,” Gina said dubiously. She was sitting at her dressing table and tying a hair ribbon into small knots. Ambrogina, Duchess of Girton, rarely fidgeted. Duchess is as duchess does, one of her governesses had insisted. But Gina was panicking. Even duchesses panic, on occasion.

  Esme Rawlings burst into laughter. “You don’t know what your own husband looks like?”

  Gina scowled. “It’s easy for you to laugh. Your husband isn’t returning from the continent to find you in the midst of a scandal. I’ve been insisting that Cam annul our marriage so that I can marry Sebastian. After he reads that dreadful bit of gossip in The Tatler, he’ll think I’m a loose woman.”

  “Not if he knows you,” Esme chortled.

  “That’s just it! He doesn’t know me. What if he believes the talk about Mr. Wapping?”

  “Fire your tutor and it’ll blow over in a week.”

  “I won’t fire poor Mr. Wapping. He came all the way from Greece to be my tutor, and the poor man doesn’t have anywhere to go. Besides, he hasn’t done anything wrong, and neither have I, so why should I act as if I had?”

  “Being seen with your tutor at two in the morning by Willoughby Broke and his wife was not the soundest policy.”

  “You know we were simply observing the meteor shower. At any rate, you’re not answering me. What if I don’t recognize my own husband?” Gina turned around on her stool and fixed her eyes on Esme. “It will be the most humiliating moment of my life!”

  “For goodness’ sake, you sound like a bad actress in a melodrama. He’ll be announced by the butler, won’t he? So you’ll have time to collect yourself. Oh my dearest husband,” Esme said, casting Gina a melting look of welcome. “What a terrible, terrible sorrow your absence has been to me!” She began fanning herself languidly.

  Gina grimaced at her. “I suppose you employ that sentence frequently?”

  “Naturally. Miles and I are always polite, whenever we meet. Which is rare, thank goodness.”

  Gina put down the ribbon, now knotted in fifty places. “Look at this—my hands are shaking. I don’t know anyone who has experienced such a horrendous meeting.”

  “You’re exaggerating. Think how poor Caroline Pratt felt when she had to tell her husband she was pregnant—and he away in the Low Countries all the previous year!”

  “That must have been difficult.”

  “Although she really did him a favor. What in God’s name would have happened to the estate if she hadn’t managed to produce an heir? They have been married over ten years, after all. Pratt should have thanked her very nicely, although I have no doubt but what he didn’t, men being the boors they are.”

  “My point is that meeting Cam is going to be prodigiously difficult,” Gina said. “I’m not sure I will know him from Adam.”

  “I thought you spent your childhood in his pocket.”

  “That’s not the same as meeting him as a grown man. He was just a boy when we married.”

  “There are plenty of women who would love to see their husbands move to the continent,” Esme pointed out.

  “Cam is not really my husband. For goodness’ sake, I was raised to think he was my first cousin, until the very day we married.”

  “I don’t see how that changes things. There are plenty of married first cousins, more’s the pity. And you are not truly first cousins, given that your mother merely raised you, as opposed to giving birth to you.”

  “Just as my husband is not truly my husband,” Gina added promptly. “Cam jumped out the window within fifteen minutes of his father forcing him to say the vows. It has simply taken him twelve years to return and annul the marriage.”

  “At least my husband left through the front door like a civilized man.”

  “Cam was hardly a man. He turned eighteen only a few days earlier.”

  “Well, you look glorious in that rose gown,” Esme said, smiling at Gina. “He’ll weep to think that he ever leaped out your bedchamber window.”

  “Nonsense. I’m not beautiful. I’m too thin and my hair resembles nothing so much as a carrot.” She peered at herself in the mirror. “I wish I had your eyes, Esme. Mine are the color of mud.”

  “Your eyes are not muddy, they’re green,” Esme corrected her. “And as for not being beautiful—look at you! You look like a Renaissance Madonna today, all slender and composed and a bit teary. Except for your hair, of course. Do you think you inherited all that red hair from your scandalous French maman?”

  �
��How should I know? My father refused to describe my real mother.”

  “Actually, a Madonna is a perfect description,” Esme continued with a wicked twinkle. “Poor dear…yet another married virgin!”

  There was a knock at the door, and Annie, the duchess’s maid, answered it. “Lady Perwinkle would like to visit for a moment, Your Grace.”

  “Do ask her to come in,” Gina replied.

  Carola Perwinkle was small and deliciously rounded, with curls that bounced around her heart-shaped little face. She let out a squeal of delight at the sight of Esme.

  “Darlings! I had to come even though it’s past time to dress because Lady Troubridge told me the most astounding tale about Gina’s husband—”

  “It’s true,” Gina put in. “My husband is returning to England.”

  Carola clasped her hands together. “How romantic!”

  “How so? I see nothing romantic about my husband annulling our marriage.”

  “All the way from Greece, simply to free you, to allow you to marry the man you love? I’ve no doubt but that his heart is secretly broken at the thought.”

  Esme looked faintly nauseated. “Sometimes I can’t imagine why I’m friends with you, Carola. My guess is that Gina’s husband is outrageously pleased to be getting her off his hands. Your husband and my husband would jump at such a chance of annulment, wouldn’t they? Why should Gina’s husband be any different?”

  “I prefer not to think of it that way,” Carola said, turning her little nose in the air. “My husband and I may not agree, but he would never annul our marriage.”

  “Well, mine would,” Esme said. “He’s simply too good-natured to say so. After we first separated, I tried my damnedest to make him angry enough to divorce me, but he was too much of a gentleman. But if annulment were an option, he’d leap at it.”

  “You are a fool,” Gina said, looking at her affectionately. “You destroyed your reputation just to get Miles’s attention?”

  Esme smiled ruefully. “Close enough. I can’t imagine why you’re friends with me, proper duchess that you are.”

  “Because I’m getting married, naturally. Whom should I come to for marital advice but you?” Gina had a wicked twinkle in her eye.

  “Better Esme than me,” Carola put in, with a little giggle.

  “My husband and I parted ways after only a month or so. Whereas Esme didn’t separate from hers for over a year.”

  “The truth is, you’re the one who should be doling out advice, Gina,” Esme said. “Carola and I shucked off our spouses and have spent a good deal of time since blowing up scandals. But you have always behaved like an exemplary married duchess!”

  “You make me sound so boring,” Gina protested.

  “Well, in comparison to our tarnished reputations…”

  “Speak for yourself,” Carola said. “My reputation may be marred but not yet tarnished.”

  “Oh well, mine is black enough for all three of us,” Esme said lightly.

  Carola was at the door. “I’d best be off if I don’t wish to look a proper hag tonight.” She slipped out the door.

  Esme jumped from her chair. “I had better fly. Jeannie is planning to dress my hair à la grecque, and I don’t wish to be late. Bernie might despair of my arrival.”

  “Bernie Burdett? I thought you said that he was a flat bore,” Gina said.

  Esme smiled impishly. “I’m not interested in his brain, my dear.”

  “You do remember that Lady Troubridge said your husband is arriving today?”

  Her response was a shrug. “Of course Miles is coming. Lady Randolph Childe is already here, isn’t she?”

  Gina bit her lip. “That’s only a rumor. Perhaps he wishes to see you.”

  Esme’s eyes were a blue that had been likened to sapphires by many a young man. They were often just as brilliant and as hard as precious gems. But they softened looking at Gina’s face. “You are a truly sweet person, Your Grace.” She stooped and kissed her cheek. “I must go make myself into a femme fatale. It would be hideously uncomfortable if Lady Childe looked better than I.”

  “That is not possible,” Gina said with utter conviction.

  “You’re simply fishing for a compliment.” Esme’s silky black curls, provocative mouth, and delicious curves had forced comparison with the most beautiful courtesans in London, since her very first season. And generally speaking, she was considered to leave her competition in the dust.

  “Weren’t you fishing for a compliment when you moaned about your muddy-colored eyes?”

  Gina flipped her hand at her. “Not the same. Every gentleman I know would grovel to enter your bedroom door. Whereas they just think of me as a straitlaced, skinny duchess.”

  Esme snorted. “You’re cracked. Try telling Sebastian how homely you are. I’m sure he can wax eloquent about your alabaster brow, etcetera, but I must dress.” Blowing a kiss, she left.

  Annie answered Gina’s sigh, not the silence. “It’s a shame, that’s what it is,” she said, picking up a hairbrush. “There’s Lady Rawlings, one of the most beautiful women in the whole of London, and her husband makes no pretense of his relationship with Lady Childe. A shame, that’s what.”

  Gina nodded.

  “You know, her husband requested a room adjoining Lady Childe’s,” Annie added.

  Gina met her eyes in the mirror, startled. “Really?”

  “It’s not all that uncommon. More the opposite. Now that I’m an upper servant, Mrs. Massey talks freely before me. And the trouble she and Lady Troubridge have had to go to during this house party, shifting the rooms around, well, you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Goodness,” Gina said lamely. At least she and Sebastian wouldn’t be that kind of couple once they were married. Poor Esme.

  2

  An Encounter Between a Duke,

  a Piglet, and a Solicitor

  There was no ignoring the fact that he had landed in England, Camden Serrard thought gloomily as he shook rainwater from the brim of his hat. His Italian boots squelched through rivers of mud. The rain was coming down so hard that the air had turned white, and he couldn’t see the end of the track leading from the dock.

  “Look out, sir!”

  He swung about, but not in time to avoid a pig eagerly bolting for freedom. Sharp little hooves trotted across his mudsplattered boots faster than he would have thought possible.

  Cam continued walking grimly toward lights that indicated some sort of hostelry. Why the hell they had to land here, in a godforsaken dock on the far side of Riddlesgate, he didn’t know. The captain of The Rose had blithely announced that he’d made a small error in navigation, excusing himself with the claim that London was a mere hour by coach. From Cam’s point of view, London might be in the next continent, given the muddy salt flats that stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see.

  He ducked his head as he entered and was rather dismayed to realize that while his man Phillipos had arrived before him and presumably bespoke a room, the pig had also joined the company and was rooting around a chair. Other than Phillopos, the pig, and the innkeeper, the room held only one customer, a fair-headed man who was reading by the fire and barely looked up when Cam entered.

  John Mumby, the innkeeper, rushed forward when he saw the broad-shouldered aristocrat standing in his doorway. “Good afternoon, Your Grace! It is an honor—a true honor—to welcome Your Grace to my humble inn, the Queen’s Smile. May I serve you some refreshment?”

  Cam slung his cloak over Phillipos’s waiting arm. “Whatever you’ve got,” he said flatly. “And don’t address me as Your Grace, if you please.”

  Mumby blinked but quickly recovered. “Of course, my lord,” he said, beaming. “Yes, sir. Coming right up, sir. Lord Perwinkle, I’ll have to ask you to remove that pig. We don’t allow livestock in the public room.”

  The fair-haired man looked up, aggrieved. “Damn it, Mumby, you just told me to leave the beast where it was. You know the blighted animal doesn’t
belong to me.”

  “Your coachman paid for him,” the innkeeper said with irrefutable logic, “and I’ve no doubt but what he’ll come back for him as soon as your axle is fixed. If it’s quite all right with you, sir, the boy will put him in the back shed.”

  Perwinkle nodded, and a boy tucked the piglet under his arm and headed into the rain.

  Cam threw himself down in a comfortable chair before the fire. It did feel good to be back in England. Last time he’d been in the country he’d been as raw as a rag, eighteen years old and full of rage…but even so he remembered with deep affection the smoky, wheatish smell of an English pub. Nothing like it, he thought as Mumby put a foaming mug of ale in his hand.

  “Or would you prefer a spot of brandy?” the innkeeper asked. “I admit, sir, that a friend of mine drops off a bottle now and again…through the back door. Nice stuff, even if it is French. Goes down a fair treat.”

  Likely the captain, Cam thought idly. Smuggling brandy, the impudent sod. No wonder we landed at the back of beyond. He took a deep draught of ale. Superb ale, and a smuggled brandy. Life was improving.

  “I was thinking of roast pheasant to start,” Mumby said anxiously, “and perhaps a little fresh pork to follow.”

  “How fresh?” Cam asked. He didn’t necessarily wish to see Perwinkle’s piglet served up for dinner.

  “Killed just last week,” Mumby affirmed. “Been hanging, it has, and it’s just reached perfection. My wife cooks a sweet pig, sir. You can depend on that.”

  “Right. And the brandy when you have a moment.”

  “Yes, sir!” Mumby chorused, seeing a shiny pile of coins growing in his mind’s eye.