The Duke's Unexpected Bride

Chapter Three

Sophie picked up the small package which was waiting for her on the escritoire when she came down from reading Aunt Minnie the latest chapter of Mrs Pardoe’s novel.

Scrawled across the wrapping paper was the message ‘To be delivered to Lady Huntley’s niece’. And below: ‘For the safety of the residents of Grosvenor Square.’ Sophie frowned and unwrapped the package and burst into laughter. A brown-leather leash and collar lay curled in the wrapping paper. She picked up her sketching bag and went in search of Marmaduke.

She found him in his favourite position on his cushion, rump to the room and nose an inch from the wall, panting faintly.

‘Behold, fair Marmaduke. I have been delivered the means of your undoing!’ she declared dramatically, but with absolutely no effect. She sighed and went to slip on the new collar. It took Marmaduke a moment to realise the offense against him, but by the time he surged to his pudgy feet and shook his head vigorously it was too late. Before he managed to descend into yowls she flapped one hand suggestively in front of his face and the shaking stopped, his gaze intent.

‘That’s right. Remember what fun you had chasing the birds? Well, they’re outside, waiting for another round.’ She began carefully moving towards the door and, to her surprise and amusement, he followed. They made a stately exit under the shocked stares of the butler and the doctor who had just entered the house.

‘Good gracious,’ said the doctor. ‘He can walk!’

‘And run, with the proper avian incentive. And now, if you will excuse us, I really don’t want to stall our momentum.’ She nodded, proceeding down the steps, and Marmaduke followed, thumping down each step ponderously but with resolution.

* * *

The collar and leash worked perfectly, and after a vigorous campaign against the winged invaders, Marmaduke allowed her to lead him to a bench in the shade of a chestnut tree and settled contentedly at her feet as she pulled out her sketch pad.

‘And now I will commemorate this auspicious moment, Duke,’ she informed him grandly, but he merely snuffled the grass in front of him and grinned.

She sketched rapidly, capturing the lumpy body and the beatific expression on his frog-like face. He looked amazingly content and she laughed a little at how content she herself felt at her minor victory.

‘There. I shall title it “Duke Reposing” and bestow it on Aunt Minnie so she can enjoy your fair smile even when you are sulking downstairs. Do you think she will like it?’

‘Undoubtedly,’ said a deep and vaguely familiar voice behind her and she turned in surprise. The tall man who had stopped Marmaduke the day before was standing a little behind the bench. His grey eyes were on her sketch, but there was no expression on his beautifully sculpted face. More than ever he made her think of a statue of a guardian of the gods, expertly crafted but without emotion. But though he seemed utterly cold, she was uncomfortably aware of a tingling heat that was pricking at her cheeks and she could think of nothing to say. The silence stretched and, as she struggled to think of anything that would not compound the embarrassing impression of yesterday, he surprised her by sitting down on the bench and taking the sketch pad from her hands. She looked away, but her gaze only settled on his hands and she noticed he was not wearing gloves and that his hands might have been formed by the same meticulous sculptor who had shaped the rest of him and with the aim of conveying strength and skill. But the perfection of his left hand was marred by a jagged and puckered white scar along the side, curving under towards the heel of his palm. She curled her own fingers into her palm against the need to touch it.

‘That is quite good,’ he said finally, handing it back to her.

The casually delivered comment finally woke her to the peculiarity of the situation and her confusion faded in annoyance at the very mild nature of his compliment on an issue of some importance to her.

‘It is very good, for a rough, impromptu sketch,’ she corrected him and his eyes narrowed and she could not tell if he was amused or annoyed by her correction.

‘So it is. I apologise for not showing the proper degree of appreciation. It is certainly well outside the usual fare of young ladies’ sketches, which are usually just a sight more bearable than their endeavours on the pianoforte. Do you play?’

‘Even if I did, I wouldn’t dare admit to it now,’ she replied primly. ‘Do you? Or are we proceeding on the assumption that only young ladies are expected to be execrable in artistic endeavours?’

‘I have no artistic skills whatsoever. The difference is I don’t try.’

‘Is that an observation about yourself or a suggestion to me?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘I wouldn’t presume. I did say the sketch was quite good, didn’t I? You are overly sensitive.’

His voice was deep but without inflexion, but something in the narrowed slate-grey eyes that were watching her made her wonder if he was laughing at her. It was like looking into the night, trying to make out shapes in the varied shades of black. It was easy to imagine monsters in the dark and she wondered if she was imagining that echo of amused warmth in his eyes. Probably. But it still teased at her, like a late summer breeze, disorienting her. She would never be able to capture that particular grey, a shade lighter than the sea off the bay in winter. But she would love to try to sketch his face, with its strongly chiselled features, all definite lines and planes, and the tightly held mouth that she wished would relax into the smile she had seen the day before.

‘May I sketch you? You have a very sketchable face,’ she blurted out before she could stop herself.

She had not thought his face could get any stonier, but she had been wrong. There was a flash of surprise in his eyes, like a glimmer of faraway lightning, then his brows drew together, accentuating the resemblance to a very annoyed deity.

‘No, you may not!’ he said curtly and she turned away with a shrug, leafing through her sketchbook to mask her mortification.

‘Fine,’ she said as indifferently as possible, fully expecting him to get up and leave, but he didn’t move. She came to the sketch she had made yesterday of his wife and stopped. The lovely, smiling face was a sobering reminder that she should not be looking at a married man or frankly at any man in quite that manner. Though to be fair, he was an amazing specimen. She had thought him handsome but rather cold yesterday, but now she realised it was much more than that. He was utterly, utterly male. And utterly out of her sphere. Augusta would have made mincemeat of her had she been present and probably rightly so. Sophie breathed in resolutely, determined to redeem herself with a gesture of goodwill.

‘I made a sketch of your wife, though. She has a lovely face. In fact, she looks like you a little. I find that married couples often look a little alike. Perhaps it is because we try to find people who remind us of ourselves so we can love ourselves better. Here it is. It is quite like her, don’t you think?’

She forced herself to look up at him with all the calm unconcern she could muster, trying to mirror his lack of expression. He stared at her and then down at the sketch, a three-quarters’ face of a woman and part of the shoulder of her gown. Sophie had sketched her smiling, which had been hard, but that was all she could remember. She waited, peculiarly tense, for his reaction.

He took the pad from her again and she didn’t resist. She watched his profile, trying to memorise its strong lines so she could sketch him later, but she found it hard to focus on the whole, distracted instead by the details she usually considered later when doing a portrait—the way the skin stretched taut from his cheekbone, the small groove at the side of his mouth, the shadow below the strong line of his jaw. Her hands tingled with the need to reach out and touch his face as she might a sculpture. She clasped them tightly and forced herself to look down at Marmaduke, now snoring calmly at their feet.

‘May I have my drawing pad back, please? I should go back.’

He looked up at her and there was something in his gaze as the dark eyes moved over her face that increased her already significant discomfort by a notch. And then his mouth relaxed slightly into a smile that brought to the surface the warmth she had glimpsed the day before.

‘Would you consider giving this to Hetty? I think she would love to have it. And she is my sister, not my wife, by the way, hence the resemblance.’

Sophie felt her face heat with a sudden burning blush and she pressed her hands to them unconsciously.

‘Oh, dear, I’m so sorry. I always say more than I ought. And of course you may give it to her. In gratitude for the collar and leash, which I was so impolite as to forget to thank you for. Here.’

She pulled the sheet from her pad and held it out to him, wishing the blush would fade.

He reached out to take it just as Marmaduke awoke with a snort and she started and dropped the sheet. Marmaduke, his eye catching the fluttering page, readied himself to leap, but before he could move she managed to capture it just as the man grabbed for it as well. His hand closed half on the page, half on her hand and she drew back abruptly, slightly shocked by the heat of his touch. The contact had been only for a second, but her arm felt like it had been dipped in hot water and her skin tingled uncomfortably, retaining the imprint of his fingers. She clasped her hands together again, as if she could blot it out. He merely regarded the sketch and stood up.

‘Thank you for this. Good luck with... Duke.’

She nodded and busied herself with her pad and with Marmaduke. The man hesitated for a moment and then strode off without another word and she could finally breathe. She picked up Marmaduke and headed back to Huntley House rather blindly, forcing a man driving a tilbury to pull up sharply and bark out at her as she almost stepped directly on to the road in front of him. She glanced up at the angry driver, mumbled an apology and rushed across the road and into her temporary home. Once inside she deposited Marmaduke on his cushion and hurried up to her little nursery-like room on the third floor. In its small quiet space there was nothing to come between her and her disturbing thoughts, and the memory of that moment in the park kept recurring, of his hand, strong and firm and warm, grasping hers and the way her nerves had flared, a striking of a tinderbox. It was absurd and unwanted. This abrupt, unpredictable man came from a very different world from hers, no matter how respectable her birth. Everything about him spoke of wealth and influence and a degree of comfort in this foreign world that she would never understand. She should not be foolish enough to let herself be drawn to him simply because she was lonely and he and his sister were the only people who had treated her with any degree of sympathy, though on his part quite a cold and sardonic sympathy.

This was not the first time she had been attracted to a man, after all. Why, she had spent three whole months thoroughly enthralled with the squire’s middle son John when he had come down from Cambridge before realising he was a pompous, oily snake, hardly any better than Cousin Arthur. Her fascination with him had then sputtered and faded pretty quickly which had been very lucky since he had actually considered offering for her until he, too, had come to accept his parents’ viewpoint that she was completely unsuitable. No doubt this silly attraction would fare just the same as soon as she found out a little more about this strange man.

It was just that he was so very handsome. And then there was that contrast between the cold mask and his sudden, almost intimate smile. No doubt it had done very well for him with dozens of gullible women. Well, she might not know London rules, but she was not gullible and she knew when a man was very used to commanding attention and getting what he wanted from women. In fact, now that she thought about it, she could hardly believe she had actually asked if she could sketch him. What must he think of her? His abrupt withdrawal made it quite clear what he thought of her offer. She should remember she was not back at home with people who had already come to terms, of sorts, with her strange ways. She would never find her way in this town if she did not learn to mind her tongue. Not that there was any chance of finding her way here in any event. In a matter of days she, too, would be sent packing back to Devon and all this would seem nothing more than a passing dream. She should do her best to just enjoy the remaining days of blessed solitude. It would be over all too soon.

* * *

Max walked into the drawing room where Hetty was seated at the escritoire, writing a letter.

‘Here, this is for you.’ He handed her the sketch and watched her face light up in delight as she scanned the simple, evocative drawing.

‘Max! What on earth? Where did you get this? Oh, I look quite lovely!’

‘Lady Huntley’s madcap niece drew it. I came across her sketching that pug in the park and she made me...or rather you, a gift of this, in recognition of the collar and leash we sent. It is good, isn’t it?’

‘It’s marvellous, though I suppose I shouldn’t say so since it is almost a compliment to myself. It is certainly more like me than that stiff portrait Mama commissioned before Ned and I married. Now I certainly must go and storm the mausoleum and thank her. How sweet of her!’

Max sat down, his eyes on the drawing. The absurdity of the whole encounter was still raw and he had no idea whether to be annoyed or amused by the girl. It had been many years since anyone had managed to disconcert him. Her voice and even her proper but outmoded dresses might mark her as another of the multitude of well-born young women who invaded London from the country, but the resemblance stopped there. Women of her birth and age usually knew how to conduct themselves with proper modesty and certainly did not engage strange men in conversations that were not only peculiar, but bordered on an unspoken intimacy, as if she knew and trusted him. It was absurd that for a brief moment he had taken her at face value and had been imprudent enough to even sit down beside her in the first place. He couldn’t imagine doing that with someone like Lady Penny without having been properly introduced. And Lady Penny would not be wandering alone in the gardens in the first place with no better chaperon than that pug. Or asking if she could draw a man’s face, even had she been introduced to him with all formality. It was little wonder he had been so disconcerted.

‘She asked to sketch me. She said I have a “sketchable” face.’

Hetty’s giggle caught on a little hiccup as she tried to rein it in.

‘My goodness, she is an original, isn’t she? Did you agree?’

He frowned.

‘Of course not!’

‘Oh, why not? You could send it to Mama; you know she has always wanted you to sit for a portrait. And by the looks of it she would do a very creditable job.’

For a moment Max contemplated the possibility. It was true their mother had begged him repeatedly to sit at least for a watercolour she could hang in her drawing room in the Dower House alongside the portraits she had commissioned of his five sisters. A quick sketch would be much less painful. Or should be. But the thought of sitting while the girl’s expressive blue eyes surveyed and catalogued him wasn’t something he was comfortable with. There was something too...intimate in it. If he had to be painted by someone, he preferred it to be someone who knew how to respect boundaries.

There had been no reason to even stop to speak with her and he still didn’t understand why he had. He certainly hadn’t intended to when he had seen her while crossing the gardens, but her total concentration on her sketch had made him curious. And once he stopped behind her it had been hard to move, as if doing so would disturb some unfamiliar wild animal he had come across in the parks on the Harcourt estates. Or one of the wood sprites his sisters had insisted appeared at dusk in the deepest reaches of the woods. He had watched her hand moving lightly but firmly over the page, her head slightly canted, the sun casting a warm line down the side of her neck and along a strand of light brown hair that had escaped her bonnet and curved round her neck and downwards. It was only when she had spoken to that dog of hers that he had shifted back into reality. But not enough to continue on his way.

It was his own foolishness that he had spoken with her, but it had been just curiosity. At least until he had touched her hand. It was ridiculous that such an accidental and inconsequential contact had sparked the same kind of sensation like those galvanic contraptions he had seen at the Royal Academy. He was too old and experienced for such a raw physical reaction. It was probably the surprise and that peculiar sensation of having a place as familiar to him as the gardens transformed into something where he was the interloper and not she. Yes. That must be it.

‘Are you coming to the Carmichael soirée tonight?’ Hetty asked as the silence stretched.

Max knew what she was asking and sighed.

‘I can’t do it, Hetty. Lady Penny is everything you said she would be, but she is just too...compliant. I would wish her at the devil before the ceremony was over. Who’s next on the list? There has to be someone who can have a conversation without deferring to everything I say.’

Hetty sighed as well.

‘You are probably right. Lady Penny’s first impression is unfortunately her best. Perhaps Clara Bannerman, she is very sweet and...’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Her laugh.’

‘Oh, dear. You’re right, that would be hard to bear day in and day out. Then what of Lady Melissa Arkwright?’

Max considered Lady Melissa, his gaze straying to the sketch Hetty held in her lap. She might do. She was certainly beautiful and poised and already showed signs of becoming a very skilful hostess. She could preside quite easily over his properties. It was worth examining.

‘She is suitable on the face of it. Why didn’t you suggest her before Lady Penny? She seems more the part.’

‘I know, but Penny is...nicer. I thought she might be a better mother. I don’t know. It’s not easy choosing a sister-in-law for my only and very dear brother, you know!’ she said severely and Max laughed, relaxing.

‘And I appreciate your help very much, Hetty. I know it’s not easy taking time from your family because I have been putting off dealing with my promise to Father all these years. There always seemed to be plenty of time to get round to it. I should have done something about it sooner.’

‘Nonsense, I’m having a grand time. This is my first time on my own in six years. Ned and the children will eventually benefit from a much refreshed wife and mother. Which gives me an idea—I shall have this framed and send it to Ned to keep him company until my role here is played out. It really makes me look lovelier than I am, doesn’t it? I wonder if she paints...’

Max shrugged. He had had enough of the eccentric blue-eyed sprite for one day.

‘I have no idea. Will Lady Melissa be at the soirée tonight as well? Perhaps we should go after all.’

Chapter Four

Max strode down the stairs where his groom was holding the reins of his grey stallion. He had slept poorly after the soirée last night and he needed to ride off some of the tension he was accumulating in this unpleasant but necessary process. He had known there would be conjecture once he started showing up with his sister at social events attended by debutantes and their mamas. It was bad enough that he had to attend these events in the first place; much worse was becoming the object of wagers, even in his own club and among his own acquaintances. The sooner he made up his mind and got it over with the better. At least Lady Melissa had proven to fit his criteria very well. More than her beauty he appreciated her inherent reserve—it was clear she wouldn’t turn out to be like Serena, a beautiful but fatally flawed vessel, just waiting for the right amount of pressure to crack it. And he certainly wouldn’t have to worry whether his children were really his. Lady Melissa was as cool and controlled as Serena had been fiery and volatile. He would let it sit a day or to and then take the plunge. There was no point in prolonging the agony.

He had just taken the reins and dismissed his groom when he saw the Huntley girl walking her ungainly pug. He hesitated, wishing he had held off for a couple minutes so he could have avoided her. Still, there was nothing for it but to be civil. He held his stallion easily as it fretted at the inaction and nodded to her.

‘Good morning. I see he has come to accept his fate with equanimity.’

She stopped, smiling up at him, but perhaps she sensed his diffidence because her smile lacked the openness of yesterday and her voice was a shade more like a society miss.

‘Good morning. He actually walked down the stairs himself after his morning visit with Aunt Minnie. He is becoming quite alert, aren’t you, Marmaduke?’

Max eyed the near-dormant pug dubiously. Alert was not an adjective that sprang to mind.

‘Impressive. What did Lady Huntley have to say about the introduction of a dreaded leash into her home?’