A Season of Secrets
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‘I do not expect you to approach the subject quite so callously, Royston.’ Edith eyed him impatiently. ‘I am very fond of the gel and I should not like to see her married to a man she did not like, or whom did not like her.’
His brows rose. ‘So you are, in fact, expecting me to secure a love match for her, despite her “social shortcomings” as you so tactfully put it.’
‘A suitable marriage does not preclude the couple from falling in love with each other,’ Edith snapped. ‘Your grandfather and I loved each other dearly. As did your father and mother.’
Yes, and it was the example of that deep love his parents had for each other that had made Justin so leery of entering into matrimony himself; he could not bear even the thought of ever loving a woman so deeply, so intensely, that his own offspring suffered because of it.
He suppressed a shudder. ‘I believe you may be expecting too much for Eleanor to secure such a love in her own marriage.’
‘We will not know until you try,’ his grandmother insisted.
‘And how do you propose I go about doing that?’ He gave a rueful shake of his head.
‘As Ellie’s closest male relative—yes, I know you’re about to say that technically you’re not really related to her at all—you might perhaps commence by accompanying her to—to a musical soirée or two, perhaps, in order that you might introduce her to these eligible if financially bereft young gentlemen of your acquaintance?’
‘I—you expect me to attend musical soirées?’ Justin stared at his grandmother incredulously as he once again rose to his feet out of sheer incapability to know what to do next; indeed, he was starting to feel like that toy he’d had as a child which had popped out of the box when the lid was lifted! ‘I believe your current indisposition has addled your brain, Grandmama!’ He shook his head. ‘I do not attend music soirées or balls in the normal course of events, let alone with the intention of marrying off my young stepcousin to some unsuspecting gentleman!’
‘But there is nothing to say that you could not make the exception in these special circumstances, is there?’ she insisted defiantly.
‘No, of course there is not. But—’
‘It would make me very happy if you were to do so, Justin.’
He narrowed suddenly suspicious blue eyes on the supposedly frail figure of his grandmother as she once again lay back, so small and vulnerable-looking against those snowy white pillows. ‘I thought it was Cousin Eleanor’s happiness which was your first and only concern?’
‘It is.’ Edith’s eyes snapped her irritation at his perspicacity. ‘And I can think of no better way to secure that happiness than you publicly acknowledging Ellie as a favoured cousin.’
‘A favoured cousin of such low social standing she has been in your own employ this past year,’ he reminded her drily.
‘I very much doubt that any of the ton would make the connection between that mousy young woman and Miss Eleanor Rosewood, the elegant and beautiful cousin of the Duke of Royston.’
He very much doubted the truth of that claim, in regard to the gentlemen in society, at least; he, for one, had certainly taken note of Eleanor’s understated beauty!
‘And even if they did,’ Edith continued firmly, ‘none would dare to socially cut or slight Ellie whilst she is seen to be under your protection.’
On that subject Justin did agree. But the cost to himself, of being forced into the tedium of attending what was left of the Season, was surely too much to expect of him? His grandmother did not seem to think so...
‘I am to host the Royston Ball in four days’ time and you are always gracious enough to make an appearance on that occasion,’ his grandmother reminded him.
‘The ball may have to be cancelled if you are still feeling so fatigued,’ he said slyly.
‘That will not happen during my lifetime!’ the dowager duchess assured him imperiously. ‘The Royston Ball has taken place for the past hundred years and this year shall be no different, not even if I have to spend the evening sitting in my Bath chair overseeing events,’ she continued determinedly.
‘And you seriously intend to introduce Eleanor into society that evening?’
She gave a haughty inclination of her head. ‘As a guest in my home she will naturally attend.’
‘And you expect me to act as her escort for the evening?’
‘As her guardian, perhaps, which would be perfectly acceptable as you are her closest male relative.’ She nodded briskly. ‘It is also the perfect opportunity for Ellie to see and be seen by the ton.’
Justin had the uncomfortable feeling that somewhere in the course of this conversation he had not only been manipulated, but soundly outmanoeuvred. An unusual occurrence, admittedly, but somehow his grandmother seemed to have succeeded in doing so. He—
‘There is one other subject upon which I shall require your assistance, my boy.’
He eyed the redoubtable old lady extremely warily now. ‘Yes?’
‘I believe it might be advisable, before any marriage were to take place, to attempt to ascertain the identity of Ellie’s real father...’
Justin’s eyes widened in shock. ‘Her real father? Was that not Mr Rosewood, then?’
‘As that gentleman had already been dead for a full year before Ellie was born, I do not believe so, no...’ Edith grimaced.
This situation, one not even of Justin’s own choosing, suddenly became more and more surreal. ‘And is Eleanor herself aware of that fact?’
His grandmother gave a snort. ‘Of course she is not. I only discovered the truth of things myself when I had her mother investigated after that idiot Frederick ran off to Gretna Green so impetuously and married the woman.’
‘So my stepcousin and ward is not only penniless, but is also a bastard—’
‘Royston!’
Justin groaned out loud. ‘And if I should discover that her real father is an unsavoury scoundrel fit only for the gutter?’
His grandmother raised imperious brows. ‘Then you will do everything in your power to make sure that no one else is ever made privy to that information.’
‘And how do you suggest I do that?’
‘I have every confidence that you will find a way, Royston.’ She smiled.
A confidence in his abilities which, in this particular instance, Justin did not share...
* * *
Ellie could not settle as she waited nervously for Justin to join her in the library. Even the warmth from the fire beside which she now sat, lit by Stanhope some minutes ago when he delivered the tray on which sat the two glasses and brandy decanter, did little to ease the chill of nervousness from her bones.
She had been in the dowager duchess’s household for a year now and before this evening could have counted the number of words she had exchanged with the top-lofty Duke of Royston on the fingers of one hand. Nor had he ever deigned to address her by her given name until this evening.
Which was not to say Ellie had not been completely aware of him, or that his full name was Justin George Robert St Just, the twelfth Duke of Royston—and a long list of other titles which escaped Ellie’s memory for the moment. Aged nine years her senior, and so obviously experienced as well as worldly, the golden-haired, blue-eyed Justin St Just had also featured largely in every one of Ellie’s romantic dreams, both day and night this past year, to a degree that she believed herself half in love with him already.
Which made awaiting his appearance in the library now even more excruciatingly nerve-racking. How embarrassing if she were to reveal, by look, word or deed, even an inkling of the sensual fantasies she had woven so romantically about the powerful and handsome duke! Fantasies that made Ellie’s cheeks burn just to think of them as she imagined Justin returning her feelings for him, resulting in those chiselled lips claiming her own, those long and elegant hands caressing her back, before moving higher, to cup the fullness of her eagerly straining breasts—
‘Your thoughts appear to please you, Cousin Eleanor...?’
Ellie gave a guilty start as she rose hastily from the chair beside the fireplace to turn and face the man whose lips and hands she had just been imagining touching her with such intimacy.
Justin did not at all care for the look of apprehension which appeared upon Eleanor Rosewood’s delicately blushing face as she rose to gaze across the library at him. Apprehension, accompanied by a certain amount of guilt, if he was not mistaken. What she had to feel guilty about he had no idea, nor did he care for that look of apprehension either. ‘Perhaps not,’ he drawled as he stepped further into the room and closed the door behind him before crossing to where the decanter of brandy and glasses had been placed upon the desktop.
‘I trust the dowager duchess is feeling better?’
As Justin’s grandmother had elicited several promises from him before allowing him to leave her bedchamber, the condition of her health being one of them, he was not now at liberty to discuss the reason for Dr Franklyn’s visit, with Eleanor or anyone else. That Justin would be having words with the good doctor himself was definite, but his grandmother had insisted that neither of her two close friends, or her companion, be made aware of the reason for her fatigue.
Justin schooled his features into an expression of amusement. ‘She assures me she feels well enough to continue as usual with the Royston Ball to be held here in four days’ time,’ he answered evasively as he turned to carry the two brandy glasses over to where she stood so delicately pale beside the glowing fire.
She made no effort to take the glass he held out to her. ‘I do not care for brandy, your Grace.’
‘I have a feeling that tonight shall be the exception,’ he said drily.
She blinked long silky lashes. ‘It will...?’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said distractedly. The flickering flames brought out the red-gold fire in her hair, Justin noted admiringly as he placed the glass in her hand; she really did have the most beautiful hair, in a myriad of shades, from deep auburn to red and then gold. Her eyes were a bright green, the same colour as a perfect emerald, and surrounded by the longest silky black lashes Justin had ever seen. As for those freckles upon her creamy cheeks and nose...
Justin felt a sudden urge, a strong desire, to kiss each and every one of them! He determinedly brought those wayward thoughts to an abrupt end and his mouth compressed. ‘My grandmother has requested that you...assist her in the matter of the ball.’
Her little pink tongue moved moistly across those full and pouting lips, making him shift uncomfortably. ‘I am not sure what assistance I could possibly be in the planning of such a grand occasion, but I shall of course endeavour to offer the dowager duchess whatever help I am able.’
Justin gave her an amused look. ‘You misunderstand, Cousin Eleanor—the assistance required of you is that you attend the Royston Ball.’
She nodded. ‘And I have already said that I shall be only too pleased to help the dowager duchess in any way that I can—’
‘You are to attend the ball as her guest—careful!’ he warned as the brandy glass looked in danger of slipping from her fingers.
Ellie’s fingers immediately tightened about the bulbous glass even as stared up at him in disbelief. Justin could not seriously be suggesting that she was to attend the ball as a member of the ton, was he?
The implacability of his expression as he looked at her down the long length of his aristocratic nose appeared to suggest that he was.
Chapter Four
‘You may find a sip of brandy to be beneficial...’
Ellie was still so stunned that she obediently sipped her drink—and immediately began to choke as the fiery liquid hit and burned the back of her throat. A dilemma Justin immediately rectified by slapping her soundly upon her back.
Perhaps a little harder than was necessary?
Ellie shook her head as she straightened, her eyes watering, her face feeling hot and flushed as she spoke huskily, ‘I have no idea what her Grace can be thinking! I could not possibly attend the Royston Ball as a guest.’
‘My grandmother has decreed otherwise.’
As if that announcement settled the matter, Ellie realised dazedly. ‘And what is your own opinion on the subject, your Grace?’ she prompted, sure that he could not approve of such a plan as this.
He gave a shrug of those wide and muscled shoulders before drawling, ‘I make it a point of principle never to disagree with my grandmother.’
Ellie knew that to be an erroneous statement from the onset; if Justin listened without argument to everything his grandmother said to him, then he would have long since found himself married, with half-a-dozen heirs in the nursery! For Edith St Just made no secret of her desire to see her grandson acquire his duchess, and not long afterwards begin producing his heirs. A desire which Ellie knew he had successfully evaded fulfilling during this past year, at least.
Ellie looked up at him from beneath lowered lashes as she tried to gauge the duke’s response to his grandmother’s unexpected decision to invite her lowly companion to attend the prestigious Royston Ball. A fruitless task, as it happened, the blandness of Justin’s expression revealing absolutely none of that arrogant gentleman’s inner thoughts. Although Ellie thought she detected a slight glint of amusement in the depths of those deep blue eyes... No doubt at her expense, she thought irritably.
Ellie was not a fool and she might well consider herself half in love with Justin, and find him exciting in a forbidden way, but that did not preclude her from knowing he was also arrogant, cynical and mocking. Or that his mockery on this occasion was directed towards her.
She drew in a ragged breath in an attempt to steady herself. ‘I shall, of course, explain to her Grace, first thing in the morning, exactly why it is I cannot accept her invitation.’
‘And I wish you every success with that.’ There was no mistaking the amusement this time in those deceptively sleepy blue eyes.
Deceptive, because Ellie was sure that nothing escaped this astutely intelligent man’s notice! ‘But surely you must see that it will not do?’
‘I am not the one whom you will have to convince of that, Eleanor,’ the duke pointed out almost gleefully, she thought crossly. ‘My grandmother, once her mind is settled upon something, is rarely, if ever, persuaded otherwise.’
That might well be so—indeed, after this past year spent in that lady’s household, Ellie knew for herself that it was!—but in this case it must be attempted. Only the cream of society was ever invited into the dowager duchess’s home, to attend the Royston Ball or on any other social occasion, and Ellie knew that she was far from being that. Admittedly, her mother and father had been on the fringes of that society, her father because he was the youngest son of a baron. And although her mother had been merely a country squire’s daughter, she had been elevated in society by her first marriage to the son of a baron, and again at the second marriage to the son of a lord, the dowager duchess’s own nephew. Even so, Ellie’s own place in society was precarious at best.
‘Indeed, I see no reason why you should wish to do such a thing,’ the duke continued. ‘If my grandmother has decided that you are to be introduced to society, then you may be assured that none in society will dare to argue the point.’
‘Even you?’ she couldn’t help asking, then flushed at her own temerity.
Justin frowned at this second attempt on Eleanor’s part to ascertain his own views on the subject. Especially when he was now unsure of those views himself...
Admittedly, he had initially dismissed the very idea of her introduction into society, but second, and perhaps third thoughts, had revealed to him that it was not such an unacceptable idea as he had first considered. His grandmother’s argument, in favour of doing so, in an effort to secure Eleanor a suitable husband, although a considerable inconvenience to himself, was perfectly valid. Most especially if Justin were to provide Eleanor with a suitable dowry, as his grandmother suggested he must do.
Eleanor was both ladylike in her appearance as well as her manner. The fact that she also happened to be impoverished should not prevent her from seeking the same happiness in the marriage mart as any other young lady of nineteen years.
There was that irritating question as to whom Eleanor’s real father might be, of course, but Justin had his grandmother’s assurances that Eleanor knew nothing of that, believing herself to be the daughter of Mr Henry Rosewood. And if Justin’s investigations into that matter, at his grandmother’s behest, should prove otherwise, then who needed to be any the wiser about it?
The father, perhaps, if he did not already know of his daughter’s existence...
Only time, and investigation, would inform Justin as to whether or not the name of Eleanor’s real father was of any relevance to this present situation.
His grandmother having elicited his next promise—that he would not speak to Eleanor on that particular subject either—Justin now turned to the reason for Edith’s insistence on Eleanor’s début into society. ‘The dowager duchess has decided it is time for you to acquire a husband.’
Green eyes widened incredulously at his announcement, even as those creamy cheeks became flushed. With embarrassment? Or temper? Or perhaps excitement? He wished he knew.
Justin did not know her well enough to gauge her present mood, but he was certainly man enough to appreciate the added depth of colour to the green of her eyes, and the flushed warmth in those creamy cheeks, as well as the swift rise and fall of the full swell of her breasts. Indeed, if this young lady had been anyone other than his grandmother’s protégée, then she would have been the perfect choice for the role of his mistress he had been considering earlier—
Justin called a sudden halt to his wandering thoughts. His grandmother’s request had now placed him in the position of guardian to this particular young lady, and as Eleanor’s guardian Justin would frown most severely upon any gentleman having such licentious thoughts, as his had just been, in regard to his own ward!
She drew in a deep breath, unwittingly further emphasising the fullness of those creamy breasts. ‘I am sure I am very...gratified by her Grace’s concern—’
‘Are you?’
Ellie gave Justin a quick glance beneath lowered lashes as she heard the mocking amusement in his tone; grateful as she was to the dowager duchess for coming to her rescue a year ago, it had not been an easy task for Ellie to learn to hold her impetuous tongue, or keep her fiery temper in check, as was befitting in the companion of a much older lady and a dowager duchess at that, and they were faults her mother had been at pains to point out to Ellie on a regular basis when she was alive.
The duke’s amusement, so obviously at her expense, which she once again saw in those intense blue eyes, was enough to make Ellie forget all of her previous caution, as she snapped waspishly, ‘I am gratified to see that at least one of us finds this situation amusing and it is not me!’
‘If nothing else, it has at least succeeded in diverting my grandmother’s attention from my own lack of interest in the married state!’ he lobbed back lazily.
Ellie eyed him in frustration. ‘I am no more interested in entering into marriage, simply because it’s convenient, than you are!’
Her mother’s marriage, to a youngest son, had resulted in Muriel Rosewood being left a virtually impoverished and expectant widow on Henry Rosewood’s death, with only a small yearly stipend from the Rosewood family coffers, and no other interest in the widow and her daughter from that family, with which to support them.
Muriel’s second marriage ten years later, to a rake of a man whom she did not love, but who offered her a comfortable home for herself and her young daughter, had not been a happy one. Far from it.
As a consequence, Ellie had decided that she would never marry for any other reason than that she loved the man who was to be her husband. Far better that she remain an old maid, she had decided, paid companion to the dowager duchess, or someone very like her, than that she should end up as unhappy as her mother before her, unpaid servant and bed partner of a man who did not love her any more than she loved him.
The duke chuckled huskily. ‘My grandmother is not easily gainsaid.’
‘You appear to have done so most successfully all these years,’ Ellie pointed out smartly.
Justin gave an acknowledging inclination of his golden head at the hit. ‘And with my grandmother’s determined efforts now firmly concentrated upon your own marital prospects, my dear cousin, I fully admit I am hoping to continue that enviable state for several more years to come.’
She frowned. ‘I do not have any “marital prospects”!’
‘But you will have, once I have settled a sizeable dowry upon you.’
‘A sizeable dowry!’ Ellie repeated, staring up at him incredulously. ‘And why, pray, would you wish to do that?’
He lifted a brow. ‘Because it would make my grandmother happy if I did?’
Ellie continued to look up at him for several long seconds, a stare the duke met with unblinking and bored implacability. Bored?
So he found the idea of marrying her off, whether she wished it or not, whether she would be happy or not, to be not only amusing but boring as well?
And to think—to imagine that she had thought only minutes ago that she was in love with Justin St Just! So much so, that she had awaited with trepidation the announcement of his betrothal and forthcoming marriage to some beautiful and highly eligible young lady. Now she could not help but feel pity for whichever of those unlucky women should eventually be chosen as duchess to this arrogant man!
Indeed, as far as Ellie was concerned, Justin St Just had become nothing more than her tormentor, out to bedevil her with threats of arranging her marriage to a man she neither knew nor loved.
It could not be allowed to happen!
Except...Ellie had no idea how she was to go about avoiding such an unwanted outcome when the duke and the dowager duchess, both so imperious and determined, seemed so set upon the idea.
She placed her brandy glass down upon one of the side tables before commencing to pace the room, as she feverishly sought for ways in which she might avoid the state of an arranged, unhappy marriage, without upsetting the kind dowager duchess, or incurring the wrath of her devil of a grandson.
Justin replenished his brandy glass before strolling over to take a seat beside the warmth of the fire, observing Eleanor’s agitated movements from between narrowed lids.
That she was displeased at the idea of an arranged marriage was completely obvious. A deep frown marred her brow as she continued to energetically pace the length of the library, which allowed Justin to appreciate the outline of her slender and yet curvaceous form in the plain brown gown and the creamy expanse of her throat above the swell of her breasts, as well as the fineness of those furiously snapping green eyes.
He couldn’t help but wonder how much more beautiful she might look with that abundance of red curls loose about her shoulders and dressed in a clinging gown, or possibly a night rail, of deep green silk...
And to think he had been bored to the point of ennui earlier this evening!
Not so any longer. Now Justin felt invigorated, the future full of possibilities, as he considered the challenge ahead of him in procuring a suitable husband for the surprisingly feisty, and obviously unwilling, Miss Eleanor Rosewood.
He was not a little curious as to the reason for her obvious aversion to an arranged marriage, when, in Justin’s experience, for the majority of the women of his acquaintance an advantageous marriage appeared to be their only goal in life.
Could it be—did Eleanor’s tastes perhaps run in another direction entirely? No, surely not! It would be a cruelty on the part of Mother Nature if a woman of such understated beauty, and surprisingly fiery a temperament as Eleanor, was not destined to occupy the arms, the bed, of some lucky gentleman. In other circumstances, she would almost certainly have made the perfect mistress—