Five Days With a Duke, page 3
This time, he didn’t have to fight back the images or memories of Iris and her mother. Connell had become such an expert on it that the mere thought of their names didn’t usher in a single thing aside from the numbness that had found a welcome home inside.
He exhaled a small circle of white. He tapped the ash over the side of his chair and onto the floor.
“Making a mess, you are, an’ who do ye expect cleans that, Yar Grace?”
Bored as he was by everything in life, he glanced to the entrance of the empty library and found the scowling housekeeper, Jennie, one of but two servants he’d acquired—and entirely by chance.
Not bothering to wait for an invitation, the birdlike woman stomped over. She wrinkled her nose. “From the smell o’ that stuff, it canna be good for ye,” she scolded.
“I trust the brandy I’ve caught you nipping would somehow be better for me, then?” he drawled.
Jennie grunted. “Dunno wot yar talking about.” Guilt splotched the old woman’s cheeks, making her out as the liar she was.
“Of course you don’t,” he said drolly. This time, however, when he tipped his ashes, he knocked them into the porcelain vase near his seat.
The day Iris and her mother left, Connell had ordered his man of affairs to purchase a residence far away from his country seat that could be moved into as quickly as possible. And if it was staff-less, the better it was. He’d wanted to shut an unfamiliar door on the whole world and suffer on with only his own miserable self for company.
Only to find upon his arrival a fortnight ago Jennie and James—husband-and-wife squatters comfortably ensconced in the townhouse. “Rapscallion, ye are.”
And for the unconventionality of a pair that had a taste for Connell’s fine French spirits, he found himself preferring their honest, not-hovering company to the usual houseful of servants he’d had at every estate or townhouse he’d ever resided in. As such, he was in no haste to fill the house with men and women scurrying about to see to his needs.
“Ah’m to take me nap. Anything else ye be wantin’?”
That had proven the greatest of oddities in his short time here. The servants informing him about how they intended to spend their time and just what services they’d render or not render. In a way that would have horrified Connell’s late parents, he rather found himself enjoying that insolence.
He waved a hand. “Off with you.”
Of course, he needn’t have bothered with an acknowledgment. The old woman, with her white, greasy hair, had already started for the door.
And Connell was left… alone.
Blessedly, happily, and quite contentedly… alone.
Once more.
Sprawling on his back, he clamped the stem of his pipe between his teeth. Overhead, a pastel country scene stared back, mocking him with its cheerfulness.
Everything about the place was so damned cheerful. “Even the damned murals,” he muttered as he exhaled a cloud of white toward that disgusting scene.
A bright-eyed little girl with voluminous blonde curls and plump cheeks sat between a couple, a lady with a wide-brimmed hat and a jacketless gent, who smiled adoringly at each other over the top of the child’s head.
He stared intently at the little girl. He didn’t blink, just took in the bucolic scene.
Not long ago, he’d had that.
Or, as close as he would ever come to that simple happiness.
There’d been laughter and mischief and always a household full of cheer.
Connell raised one of his middle fingers at that trio, and with the other hand, he raised his pipe to his lips and let the smoke fill his lungs. After finishing it off, Connell turned the pipe over and dropped the remnants of his smoke into the nearby vase.
He narrowed his eyes on the porcelain piece.
Connell squinted. By God, if it wasn’t that same damned trio frolicking on his ceiling, enjoying a ride upon a garden swing. Was there nothing that painted group did not do?
For sale. He was going to sell every cock-a-hoop item in this damned household. And paint. He was going to have the front stucco scrubbed of all joviality and the interior walls splashed with some sterile white wallpaper.
Closing his eyes, he soon fell asleep.
A distant banging penetrated Connell’s slumber. He forced tired eyes open and struggled to gain his bearings in the chilled room.
The room and everything about it was foreign.
Not even a fire had been set or stoked in the hearth? Why wasn’t there warmth? Iris would be chilled.
And then it all came rushing back to him.
Iris… who was gone. Who’d been lost to him. That loss came as fresh as when her mother had informed him of her plans to marry the bounder who’d first deserted her. Through the fog of pain and haze of confusion, he glanced around.
Where in blazes was…?
His gaze collided with… the merry vase at his feet. Stifling a curse, he turned the damned article around.
Of course.
The happy family, painted on the opposite side, stared back. Taunting him. Jeering him for his misery and loneliness and—
Knock-knock-knock.
Or his previous loneliness. For now, it would appear as though he had company.
What in hell?
That was… preposterous. Who would be pounding at his door? Be it when he’d been away in Kent or here in London, no one visited him. Not any longer. After he’d traded his bachelor ways for those of a responsible guardian, the other gentlemen he’d called “friends” had found other bounders without responsibilities for company. And the respectable guests had stopped coming ’round after Connell had broken his betrothal, which had left simply… no one else to pay him calls. Either way, his servants would see to whoever was on his doorstep.
Knock-knock-knock.
His derelict servants would not be seeing to anything. In fact, they were likely two sheets to the wind and well on the first legs of their morning or afternoon—or whatever time of day it was—nap they habitually stole.
Cursing roundly, Connell swung his legs over the sides of the sofa and set his feet on the floor. The cold immediately penetrated his thick silk stockings. By the time he made the march through the confoundingly unfamiliar residence, the knocking had come to a stop.
Splendid. Whoever the hell had come was now gone, and he could enjoy the pleasure of his solitary company.
Pain jolted through him, and he came to an abrupt stop, ironically upon that odious ball of sunshine that adorned the middle of the white marble foyer.
For so long, his days had been filled with daily picnics and games of hide-and-go-seek.
And now, what was there?
A drink. He needed a drink.
Connell turned to go… when through the thin glass panel along the side of the door, he caught a glimpse of a lone figure on his stoop.
He peered through the translucent gossamer fabric at the odd creature.
What in blazes?
Like Lady Jersey without the benefit of her quizzing glass, the woman squinted, and then under the enormous brim of her feathered bonnet, she cupped her hands over her eyes. “Whoohooloo, I see you.”
The enormous slab of oak managed to mute, but not silence, his guest’s voice.
Though, intruder would be a more apt and fitting term for the one with her face all but pressed to his newly acquired windowpane. There was certainly no one he was expecting. No one even knew of his recent acquisition.
The woman stuck her nose against the glass. “If you’d be so kind and open the door?”
And it happened. For the first time in the six months since Iris had gone, Connell was intrigued. It’d been so long since he’d felt anything but a numbness that he’d believed himself incapable of feeling… well, anything but annoyance anymore.
“I have business with your employer,” the stranger was saying.
Business with his employer? She’d mistaken him for a servant. But then, it was a fair enough mistake to make given that generally every last Mayfair residence had these doors opened by either a first or second butler. Connell, however, was certainly the only duke without the benefit of either.
Stalking forward, he grabbed the handle and opened the door. The woman immediately stopped speaking. “Oh,” she blurted, and with horror rapidly filling her eyes, she looked him up and down. “You… are not old or wizened.”
Connell rubbed at sleep-bleary eyes. There was something vaguely familiar about the pleasingly plump, red-cheeked miss standing on his stoop. “Should I be?” He searched his foggy mind in a bid to place those perfectly rounded cheeks.
“Yes,” she exclaimed.
And those pretty blue eyes, albeit angry eyes. And her lips. Lush and perfectly plump on the bottom and slightly thinner on the top, they weren’t lips a man should or would forget. Only, the flat line of those lips proved to be the identifier. He groaned. Her! As in Lady Caroline or Lady Con… something or another. Whatever her name, she was none other than his former betrothed’s best friend. Or one of them.
“Is this some kind of damned dream?” He was being haunted by Lady Emilia’s friends. This was to be further punishment for breaking that betrothal, then.
Chapter 3
Constance came to any number of realizations, and all at once.
One, the object of her pity wasn’t, in fact, an old, sad, lonely guardian, but rather, a surly, glaring gentleman.
Two, the poor man wasn’t at all poor, either in his financial or his emotional state.
And three, she needn’t have worried herself in lying to readers. The gentleman was very much… a duke. As in the Duke of Renaud. Who’d stolen the heart of Constance’s dearest friend, Emilia, and then broken it when he’d ended their betrothal.
“You,” she seethed.
The Duke of Renaud gave her an icy once-over. “Given that you’re the one barging into my household, I daresay if either of us is entitled to indignant surprise, it should be me.”
Indignant surprise indeed.
As if he were the wounded party. Not that she was the wounded party. That courtesy belonged to Emilia. Not that Emilia wasn’t blissfully happy and hopelessly in love with her devoted husband. That was neither here nor there. Nay, the Duke of Renaud was no wounded party.
What he was, was a miserable, heartless scoundrel. “Well, if it is a dream, Your Grace, then we are both having the same blasted one, and I certainly wouldn’t classify it as a dream, but rather, a bloody nightmare.”
He whistled. “The mouth on you.”
“Thank you.” After all, certain situations merited sass. “And given your sudden concern with propriety, what are you doing answering your own door? Don’t you have a butler?”
He bristled. “Of course I have a butler.”
She peered around a pair of broad shoulders, searching—
The duke pulled the door closed even farther so that the slab hung open only a smidge, and her unhindered view into his household was cut off. “What the hell do you want, Lady Caroline?”
“Constance.” The bounder. He’d been betrothed to her best friend and couldn’t even remember her name? “My name is Constance.”
“I don’t care if you’re Eve here to atone for your sins. What do you want?” he demanded, not at all the kindly old guardian she’d been seeking.
Well. “Forgive me,” she said, matching his tones in coldness. “I’m afraid I’ve come to the wrong residence.” Glancing down at her letter, she skimmed the contents. “I am looking for—”
Click. The decisive sound of the wood panel closing brought Constance’s head whipping up. She gasped. Why… why… the bounder had just shut the door in her face.
Click. Constance grunted as the lock turned. And he’d locked it.
“Well, you needn’t worry.” She waved a fist at the fierce lion door-knocker. The metal creature hung with its mouth open midroar, as surly as the beast who dwelt within that residence. “The last person I was looking for was you.” Looking for the address once more, Constance confirmed the number.
Seventeen.
With that number echoing in her head, she marched down the steps and looked at the neighboring townhouses. And then, with a horrible dread, she glanced up at the last doors she’d ever intentionally seek out.
“Seventeen,” she said aloud, her breath making a little cloud of white in the cold.
Her stomach sank.
There’d been no mistake. This was her intended destination, after all.
But… but if not the address, there was surely a mistake somewhere. Why, writing Constance that note, appealing to her pity, and managing to lure her to a gentleman’s residence? Someone had certainly played some manner of game with her.
She’d long committed the words upon the letter to memory, but the situation merited another read.
And yet, I fear if I give you his identity, you will refuse. But, Miss Matcher, he is lonely and very much in need of finding love.
Constance sighed. Yes, nothing in the note mentioned anything about an old lord. She had simply made assumptions based on what she’d read. Huddling in her cloak, she stole another look at the pink stucco townhouse.
She’d not taken the Duke of Renaud as a pink-stucco-townhouse manner of gentleman.
Even in their youths, back when Constance had known him through his association with Emilia, he’d always been attired in dark garments and shown a meticulous style for anything… well, not pink or frothy or light.
Not that there was anything frothy or light about the duke’s character this day.
Constance stomped back toward her carriage, waiting at the end of the street.
The Duke of Renaud was surlier than she recalled.
Nay, the only recollections she had of him went back to when he’d been betrothed to Emilia, and in those days, His Grace had never been without a smile or a laugh.
Constance slowed her steps and then stopped altogether several feet from the carriage. She absently registered the driver climbing down from his box and pulling the door open in anticipation of her arrival.
Constance remained fixed to the pavement. Wind tugged at her skirts, the cool bite of winter air penetrating the heavy fabrics.
Despite her immediate conclusion that the letter to Mrs. Matcher had been made in jest, Constance racked her brain for what Emilia had confided in her about that long-ago breakup with His Grace, the Duke of Renaud. There’d been a ward and a child, but the age of the child Constance knew not, nor had Emilia mentioned that particular detail.
Reaching inside her reticule, Constance fished out the note and carefully examined the scrawl. She noted other details that had previously escaped her: the slightly too big loping letters, the flourish of the hand, the small flower drawn at the bottom, which, well, Constance hadn’t paid all that much attention to. Now, however, each and every sign pointed to the fact that the letter had been written by the young girl.
A young girl who was most concerned about the fact that she’d left her former guardian and his current sad state.
“It is a sad state.” Just not in the way the young girl had meant.
“What is that, miss?”
She looked up at the graying servant who still stood in wait with the door held open.
“Nothing.”
Closing her eyes, Constance went back and forth in her mind, fighting with herself, fighting with logic. She opened her eyes.
“Miss?” Whitey questioned.
Oh, hell and biscuits. “I’ll be back in a moment.” Turning on her heel, Constance started a march back down the pavement, along the same path she’d traveled.
What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?
Her footfalls came in time to that five-syllable intonation.
She came to a stop outside Number Seventeen.
Collecting her hem, she took the steps and then grabbed the duke’s angry lion and brought the banger down.
The door was opened almost immediately.
He’d either been lingering in the foyer or… nay, he’d been lingering. No one would have opened the door that quickly.
“Youuu,” he said in pained tones.
“May I?”
“I’d rather you…”
Constance proceeded around him.
“Well, in that case, please,” he said in droll tones, “do come in.” He closed the door behind them and leaned against the panel. “Do you intend to stay? Should I have guest rooms readied?”
Rooms readied? “Do not be ridiculous.” She caught the mocking glint in his eyes. “Hmph. Well, surely you didn’t expect we’d remain conversing on your stoop. It would be ruinous if I were to be discovered here.”
The gentleman looped his arms at his chest. “But your paying an unmarried gentleman a call is quite aboveboard.”
“Not at all.” He’d always been a scoundrel. When Emelia had gone and fallen in love with the notorious rogue, the whole world had whispered that only ruin awaited. The duke had not changed one bit. “It’s quite scandalous, really. My being here.”
“I was being sarcastic,” he said, his expression deadpan.
“Oh.” Had he always had this biting wit? In their youth, she’d always been invisible to him, as was evidenced all these years later by the fact that he’d had no recollection of her name.
He lifted a golden brow, prompting Constance to clear her throat. “I’ve gone through the risks-to-reward analysis.”
“Risks-to-reward analysis,” he silently mouthed while she spoke.
“Given the whole of London is still gone for the winter, the risk of discovery, though perilous, remains small.”
“You are here, Lady Cordelia,” he pointed out.
“Constance. My name is…” It was really neither here nor there. “You are also here, my lord,” she said, getting back to the reason for her being here.
“Your Grace.”
Constance flashed an innocent smile. “Given you aren’t one who much values a person’s actual name, I trust you aren’t all that particular on whether or not you’re a ‘Your Grace’ or ‘my lord.’”
His eyebrows drew sharply together.
Ignoring that palpable annoyance, Constance searched the spacious foyer. Her gaze landed on the ornate golden oak hall table. Taking a determined path across the pale pink marble floor, she set her bag down and then shoved her hood back so she could look without hindrance at the sad state of the duke’s household.
