Never a Duke, page 14
Rosalind and her escort had ambled some distance from the house, to a rose arbor covered in greenery. “Something has made you sad,” she said. “Do you miss the dog?”
“Let’s sit, my lady. Why do you say I am sad?”
“Your eyes, the quality of your quiet. You are self-possessed to a fault, but something troubles you today. If you are quitting the inquiry into my missing maids, you need only say so. You have already been of immeasurable help.”
“Will you quit the inquiry, my lady?”
Rosalind thought back to the previous week’s encounter with His Grace of Rothhaven. “I won’t want to.”
Beneath the arching rose arbor was a bench of wrought iron painted white. Rosalind took a seat, wanting the privacy, however forbidden.
Mr. Wentworth remained on his feet, which Rosalind took for a prelude to a polite, entirely rational explanation of why they must admit defeat.
“The situation grows complicated,” he said. “I have kicked over certain rocks, in certain low and unsavory locations. A scheme is definitely afoot, and whoever is behind it has the power to intimidate one of the most hard-hearted, ruthless, conniving people I know. My challenge is to be yet still more intimidating, which is difficult when I don’t know who my enemy is.”
“Sit with me?” Rosalind asked.
He glanced around the deserted garden, then flipped out the tails of his morning coat and settled beside her. The bench was small, and he took up rather a lot of it.
“The matter is now officially dangerous, my lady. If the abbesses and madams are afraid, then an earl’s daughter has every reason to keep her distance.”
“If the abbesses and madams are afraid, can you imagine how Calliope Henderson must feel? How Francine Arbuckle must feel?”
The dog woofed from some yards away, then came trotting up the path to sit at Ned’s feet.
“Yes, actually,” Mr. Wentworth said, “I can imagine exactly how they feel. Miss Arbuckle was off to fetch a pair of slippers one moment, and then her world came to an end. As far as she knows, nobody cares one whit about what has befallen her.”
Rosalind slipped her hand into Mr. Wentworth’s. “I would care very much if you disappeared.”
“That’s not what I…You ought not to say such things.” And yet, he made no move to turn loose of her hand.
“Why not? My mother was there one day, and a week later, she was gone. I was not permitted into her sickroom, and I never had a chance to tell her I loved her. When I was younger, I believed that if she’d known how much I would miss her and how much I needed her, she would not have left me.”
Rosalind leaned against Mr. Wentworth, missing her dear mama all over again.
“Do you have a likeness of her?” he asked.
“My father has a miniature of her beside his bed. The servants looked the other way, and I sneaked into his room often enough to make a copy.” While Ned Wentworth had nothing of his family, not a sketch, not a Bible, nothing.
“I keep at my embroidery for that reason,” he said. “I would sit beside my mother when I was a small boy, and watch her make flowers with thread and linen while she sang the old lullabies and ballads. She showed me all the stitches and told me that when I could thread my own needle, I could have my own hoop. I poked more holes in my fingers than I did in the cloth at first.”
“But you persisted, and now your stitchery is beautiful.” And how Rosalind’s heart ached for that small boy, fascinated with his mother’s needlework.
“To become a tailor takes years, but I had the knack of embroidery fairly quickly. I want you to promise me something, Rosalind.”
Not my lady, but Rosalind. She hugged that bit of familiarity to her heart. “I’m listening.”
“Promise me that at no point will you take on the particulars of this investigation yourself. Somebody powerful, nasty, and determined has devised this scheme, and you are a pretty young woman.”
My nose is too big. My hair is too dark. My opinions are too much in evidence and those are very unattractive qualities indeed. “I am not a companion or a lady’s maid. I am safe.”
Mr. Wentworth brought her gloved hand up, to rest his cheek against her knuckles. “I thought I was safe, Miss Arbuckle thought she was safe, as did Miss Henderson and Miss Campbell. If they can be snatched off the street, so can you, and I would never forgive myself if any harm befell you. Promise me you will be careful.”
“You must promise me something too, Ned Wentworth. May I call you Ned?” Shockingly familiar of her, but she so wanted him to continue calling her Rosalind rather than my lady.
“My given name is Edward, and I will cheerfully answer to Ned. I’m not all that fond of Neddy, truth be told.”
“If you refrain from calling me Roz, I will exercise a reciprocal courtesy and refrain from calling you Neddy. Promise me you will be careful. Not simply cautious as you are by nature, but inordinately careful. I would never forgive myself if any harm befell you.”
He kissed her gloved fingers, and some of the bleakness left his eyes. “You are a marvel, Rosalind Kinwood. A blazing, beautiful marvel.”
Had she leaned forward four inches, she could have kissed him for those words, but the dog chose that moment to spring to his feet, tail wagging, and warn them of approaching footsteps.
* * *
Ned hadn’t brought Rosalind to the rose arbor on purpose, but the garden had only so many benches, and benches tended to be located in the shade, and her ladyship was, as Ned had noticed on countless occasions, ever so kissable.
Fate, in the form of two females whom he ignored at his peril, preserved him from taking that liberty.
“Uncle Dee-Dee can read me a story!” Lady Mary Jane Wentworth charged ahead of her sister and wedged herself between Ned and Lady Rosalind. “Nurse said.”
Lady Elizabeth Wentworth, who no longer tolerated the nickname Bitty from any save her papa, sighed dramatically.
“Mary saw you from the nursery window, and what she sees she must have on the very instant lest we all lose our hearing. Nurse said the day was quite fine so the infant could take the air, and because I am exceedingly bored with my intolerably dull French verbs, I have made this enormous sacrifice. Am I not noble of heart? You should introduce me to Lady Rosalind, Ned. That would be polite.”
Jane claimed that Elizabeth had reached the excessive modifiers stage of girlhood, when speech was peppered with quite, exceedingly, very, vexatiously, and other extraneous flourishes. According to Jane, the next phases would be wheedling for two straight years to adopt adult hairstyles, followed by the apotheosis of botheration, a fixation on boys.
“Read me the ass,” Mary Jane said, opening her book. “The ass says hee-uhh-hee-uhh!”
Ned put Mary Jane on his lap. “Lady Rosalind Kinwood, may I make known to you Lady Elizabeth Wentworth, long-suffering saint without portfolio and aspiring literary genius. Byron hasn’t a patch on Lady Elizabeth’s rhymes. This embodiment of all that is wonderful on my lap is Lady Mary Jane Wentworth, Mary the Magnificent to her mob of adoring friends. I suspect I will not be permitted to leave this bench without reading the indicated tale.”
Mary Jane was growing like the proverbial weed, as was Elizabeth. Whereas Elizabeth had always been nimble and lithe, little Mary Jane was chubby. Elizabeth’s coltish grace was lately accompanied by pronouncements alternately insightful and pompous, and by pensive silences.
She was at an age where her feelings were easily hurt, an age Ned found hard to even look upon.
“Make the ass, Uncle Dee-Dee!” Mary Jane demanded. “The ass goes heeee-uhhhh-heeee-uhhhh!”
The dog looked worried, while Lady Rosalind looked ready to burst out laughing.
“Ned does the best ass,” Elizabeth said earnestly. “Papa is our best bear, Cousin Duncan is a creditable owl, and Uncle Stephen is a fearsome wolf. For a proper braying ass, we much prefer Ned.”
“Then I must hear this story,” Lady Rosalind said, in all apparent seriousness. “My own dramatic talents are limited, and I enjoy a well-told story as much as anybody.”
“Elizabeth would be in your debt if you accompanied her back to Her Grace’s parlor.” More than that, Ned could not say without embarrassing Elizabeth. The girl longed to be included in her mother’s weekly at-homes, while Jane insisted that there was time enough for that nonsense in a year or two.
Elizabeth had doubtless volunteered to bring Mary Jane to the garden simply for the opportunity to walk past the open parlor doors.
“Thank you, no,” Lady Rosalind said. “I much prefer the company to be had here in the garden, and I’m sure Lady Elizabeth does too.”
Elizabeth subsided onto the opposite bench, apparently concluding that having the notice of one earl’s daughter was preferable to peeking through the parlor doors and risking Mama’s wrath.
“You really must not let us keep you from socializing, Lady Rosalind,” Ned said. “Perhaps I’ll see you hacking out in the park some fine morning later this week.” Tomorrow would serve nicely.
“Do the ass,” Mary Jane said. “The ass goes heee-uhhhh—”
Ned put a gentle hand over her mouth. “You are scaring Hercules. Attend me.” He could nearly recite the tale by heart, but for the child’s sake trailed his finger along the written words as he spoke. “A donkey—that’s asinus in Latin—out wandering one day came upon the skin of a lion left in the forest by a hunter. Desiring to graze in peace undisturbed by wolves, jackals, and other hungry beasts, the ass donned the lion’s skin…”
The donkey of course fooled everybody until he opened his mouth to speak—Ned dreaded to read those lines before Lady Rosalind, but brayed his way through them anyway—in which case the fox laughed himself silly at the donkey’s expense.
“And the moral of the story…” Mary Jane said. “You have to read the moral, Uncle Dee-Dee.”
“And the moral of the story,” Ned recited, “Quod non es, nec te esse simules. Do not pretend to be what you are not.”
“Or the fox will laugh at you, and you will feel ashamed.” Mary Jane closed the book and hugged it. “I try to be good so I won’t be ashamed.”
“You are good,” Ned said, cuddling her gently. “Never doubt it, child. You are the best little girl in the whole wide world, excepting possibly your older sisters, and they have had longer to practice than you have.”
Elizabeth smiled a knowing-older-sister smile at that nonsense.
“Uncle Dee-Dee says I’m good.” Mary Jane stuck her tongue out at her sister. “Read me another.”
“I must not,” Ned said solemnly. “Nurse allowed us one story, and we should obey her if we’re to catch up to your sisters in goodness.”
“I want another story.”
“Then scamper back to the nursery with Elizabeth now, and when I come for supper on Sunday, I will read you another. If you wished to be doubly extra-good, you could bring Nurse a daffodil or two to brighten the playroom.”
“I’ll bring her three!” Mary Jane was off the bench, her book forgotten, her sister’s hand clutched in hers.
Hercules trotted after them, leaving Ned alone with Lady Rosalind, who had just heard him do his very best impersonation of a braying ass.
“My mortification,” he said, “is without limit.”
“As are your thespian skills. I had forgotten that story, if I’d ever heard it before.”
She wasn’t laughing at him outright. In fact, she was regarding him with a seriousness the moment did not warrant.
“I was so behind in my Latin when His Grace consigned me to the schoolroom that I had to start with simple tales. I began reading the English versions to Bitty—Lady Elizabeth, rather—when she came down with chicken pox years ago, and my fate was sealed.”
Rosalind took his hand and leaned against him on the bench. He could not see her face and thus had no clue what she was about.
“Rosalind?”
“You adore those children. You would die to keep them safe.”
“I would, of course.”
“What am I to do with you?”
You could kiss me. Except the moment wasn’t a kissing sort of moment. The moment was a Rosalind sort of moment. Ned wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and that seemed to ease whatever emotion gripped her.
They remained thus, his arm around her, her cheek pressed to his chest, until Hercules trotted up the path and sat at Ned’s knee.
“Will you meet me in the park tomorrow morning?” Ned asked.
Rosalind nodded and swiped at her cheek with gloved fingers. “Weather permitting. The day after otherwise, and so forth. We must find them, Ned. Every day matters. I feel it in my bones.”
“We will find them.” He sneaked a kiss to her temple, not half so confident as he sounded. Tryphena Hepplewhite did not intimidate easily, and whoever was behind this maid-snatching scheme had her thoroughly cowed.
That dubious accomplishment spoke of both ruthlessness and the power to act on that ruthlessness.
“I’ll see you back to the house and make my farewells to Her Grace,” Ned said, removing his arm from Rosalind’s shoulders. “I would rather tarry with you out here on a picnic blanket.”
“Someday, Ned Wentworth, you will tell that bank to go to blazes, and when you do, I hope I am on hand with a hamper and blanket, and a gig waiting to take us into the countryside.”
What a marvelous, tempting thought, and not because of a hamper full of sandwiches. “I’ll live in hope then,” he said, rising and offering Rosalind his hand. “I know a group of widows who have a thriving business making up picnic baskets. Say the word and I will put in our order.”
Rosalind stood and hugged him. “Surprise me, as you have surprised me today.” She took his arm before he could turn the hug into anything more and walked with him back to the house.
He parted from Jane on a promise to return for Sunday supper, though just once, he’d like to spend his Sunday enjoying a picnic in some secluded wood out in Surrey. He left the Walden town house as he mentally scouted locations for that happy occasion only to find a Walden groom walking Ned’s matched pair of chestnut geldings.
“What happened to my tiger?” Ned asked, more worried than irritated that Artie would leave his post.
“Said he had to step around behind the mews,” the groom replied. “That was three-quarters of an hour ago, Mr. Wentworth. I figured the lad was in the kitchen. That’s where I’d have been at his age. Boy could use some extra meals.”
“The boy will soon need a new post,” Ned said. “Have a look around and send him out here. I’ll circle past a few times, but if you can’t find him, he knows to return to the bank by sundown.”
“Aye, sir.” The groom touched a finger to his cap and ambled off in the direction of the alley.
Ned dawdled for nearly thirty minutes, and still, Artie was nowhere to be seen.
Chapter Nine
“Did you and his lordship promise to exchange recipes?” Rosalind asked, tying her bonnet ribbons loosely.
Mrs. Barnstable accepted a parasol from one of the Walden household’s Viking footmen. “We did, my lady, and I must say, the viscount’s approach was very intriguing. Spices, of all things. I mean, one knows they have an effect on the humors, but his study of them has been most scientific. He avers that chocolate…”
She paused to extract gloves from her reticule. Rosalind noted that Mrs. B’s gloves had seen better days. Ned had said the investigation had become dangerous, but allowing him and his Wentworth relations to take all the initiative had grown…vexing.
“Begging your ladyship’s pardon,” the footman said, “but Mr. Wentworth has said I am to accompany you home.”
He spoke with a slight accent, German or Scandinavian. Mr. Ventvorth.
“Very kind of you,” Rosalind replied, “but I’m sure that’s not necessary. I thought to make a stop at the glovemaker’s and who knows how long we might tarry there?” She tried for her gracious-lady smile and got exactly nowhere. This footman might have been the King of Sweden for all his dignity, and he was every bit as formidable a specimen as Walden himself.
“Then I will carry your packages.”
Then I vill carry your peckages. Snapped off with a full complement of masculine implacability.
“Your name?” Rosalind asked.
“Ivor, my lady.”
He was somewhat lacking in deferential manners, and Rosalind could not determine his age. Ivor could be a slightly weathered thirty or a splendidly vigorous forty, but no footpad with a brain in his head would test Ivor’s mettle.
No kidnapper either. You are a marvel. A blazing, beautiful marvel. The words could have been teasing, but the look on Ned’s face when he’d spoken them had been nearly reverent. Rosalind had no delusions about her desirability generally. She was not a young, comely lady’s maid, but Ned Wentworth found her attractive.
Found her marvelous.
“My lady.” Mrs. Barnstable stood by the door, bonnet and gloves on, parasol in hand. “One does not offend a ducal family by refusing the services of one of their domestics.”
First, there was nothing domestic about this toweringly muscular footman. Second, to blazes with the ducal family, though Rosalind would not casually offend Ned Wentworth.
“Of course I appreciate Ivor’s escort.”
Mrs. B toddled along at far below her usual pace, doubtless delighted to be seen on Mayfair’s streets with a footman in ducal livery. When Rosalind would have ducked down a shady alley, Ivor shook his head.
“No alleys, please, my lady. I am but one man with two ladies to safeguard.”
Drat all cautious footmen. Rosalind would investigate the alley another time, for it was the route Francine Arbuckle would have taken to the cobbler’s.
“The longer route then,” Rosalind replied, ignoring Mrs. Barnstable’s curious glance.
At the glovemaker’s, Ivor assumed the usual post near the door. The proprietress took one look at him—and his livery—and hustled forward to greet Rosalind.
“My lady, good day. Have you come to complete your collection of spring gloves? We have the most delicious assortment of colors and fabrics, and I would be happy to measure either of you for future orders.”
