Page 11 of A Duchess of Mystery (The Mismatched Lovers #3)

L ady Dora Carstairs extricated herself from Diccon’s embrace and, swinging her arm back, slapped him hard across the face.

“But did you have to leave it for nearly twenty years?” The words exploded from her lips uncontrollably.

Yes, she was overjoyed to see him, but she was also wild with fury, a condition most unusual for her. “We all thought you were dead!”

The man who Diccon, her best friend, her partner in so many childhood scrapes, and her protector from Marcus’s violent temper, had become put a rueful hand to his reddening cheek.

“What’s wrong with all you ladies today?

I keep getting slapped, and I could swear I haven’t done anything to deserve it.

You can hardly say it’s my fault that Marcus told everyone I was dead.

” He paused, his eyes taking on a mischievous twinkle.

“And when did you learn to hit so hard?”

With fury still quivering through her, emotion, never far from the surface, finally took hold of Dora.

She burst into tears and threw her arms around her Diccon again, burying her face against his shirt front.

“And you smell like you’ve been sleeping in the stables.

” The words came out muffled. But really, she felt as though he might vanish away again if she were to let go of him.

A discreet cough brought her back to reality.

Dora lifted her head to peer over Diccon’s admirably broad shoulder.

Bella was standing at the foot of the stairs and gazing up at where they stood locked together on the half-landing, an expression of astonishment on her face.

That she was here, in her riding habit, the one Dora had tried to persuade her to dye black, and had not gone out riding, was a surprise in itself.

Bella set her hands on her hips. “If you two have quite finished with your emotional reunion, perhaps we can have breakfast? Cook has especially prepared it early in order to welcome our new duke to Stourbridge, and I don’t want to appear ungrateful. You know how she can get in a huff.”

Diccon released Dora and took her hand instead.

She clung onto it. How tall he’d grown, and how very manly.

So far from the boy she’d known. Her own head didn’t even reach his chin, and she was two inches taller than Bella.

In her head all these years he’d remained the skinny, awkward boy of fifteen who’d packed his bag one day, kissed her on either cheek, and told her he was off to join the army.

To see him transformed into a man of what must be five and thirty had upended her vision of him in her head.

Although his face had hardly changed. Filled out, possessed of what looked like a burgeoning beard, but still the face she’d loved since early childhood.

He bent to retrieve her cane for her, and they descended the stairs together.

Bella smiled, but it was the brittle, mirthless smile Dora knew all too well of late; a smile that might well match her own.

Ever since Marcus’s death, which she really didn’t want to think about, she’d seen little else on her sister-in-law’s face.

Well, if she thought back to before that landmark, she had to admit that even then, if Marcus was around, Bella had scarcely smiled. Not properly, anyway.

Dora held out her free hand to Bella. “You must know, Bella, that Diccon and I were children together until he left to be a soldier. We grew up together, close in age, were instructed in the schoolroom together, and kept company constantly.”

Diccon nodded, a wide smile on his handsome face.

At least he looked truly happy. Someone deserved to be.

Perhaps. He nodded. “Not just us, but we played with some of the servants’ children as well.

Old Amos has already told me how Joe Rowan is now head groom at Bembridge House.

A shame, as I would’ve liked to have seen him again.

But as I recall, Bembridge isn’t above ten miles distant. ”

Oh, those distant halcyon days of sundrenched childhood, a childhood shared with her beloved Diccon.

The glow of contentment inside her threatened to come spilling out, strong enough, just for one glorious moment, to shoulder aside the nagging fears that still lingered from that terrible night nearly two months since.

The night she fought daily to forget. The night that haunted her nightmares.

“I don’t think it would do,” Bella said, with a warning frown, “to be going to visit the head groom at one of our neighbor’s homes. Not now our cousin is a duke. He needs to remember his position in society, even if it isn’t one he’s accustomed to.”

She was right, of course, even though she was being unreasonably haughty. She always was. Dora nodded, a little downcast by this approbation. “I fear that’s so.”

Diccon laughed, reminding her sharply of how devil-may-care his attitude had always been as a boy. “As a duke, I think I can do exactly what I like now, don’t you? I had enough of being told what to do here as a child. I have no intention of allowing anyone to do that to me again.”

Oh dear. That sounded more than a little confrontational.

And Bella seemed to have interpreted it that way as well, because her delicately drawn eyebrows had formed themselves into a perfect V of displeasure.

If only these two, the people she loved most in all the world, should not get off to a bad start and take it into their silly heads to dislike each other.

Her glow of contentment flickered a little at the worry, and her worst memories came thundering back into her head as though that worry had opened the door for them.

“Are-are you on your way into breakfast?” she tried, hoping to deflect what might develop into an argument.

There’d been too many arguments over the years here at Stourbridge for her liking.

She would do anything to prevent another starting. Anything.

“Of course we were,” Bella snapped, her tone more tart than needed. She did not like to be thwarted in even the smallest way. “I already told you we were. Come along, both of you, else it will be cold.” She spun on her heel and pushed open the breakfast room door with her customary determination.

Dora leaned close to Diccon. “Have no fear. She’s just saying that. It won’t be cold, you know, for the footmen have it on heated plates. It stays hot for quite some time.”

His deep laugh rumbled. “I guessed as much. But thank you for the heads up, for it’s a long time since I had the pleasure of eating in a proper breakfast room. More often than not it’s been last night’s supper heated up in my mess tin, seated on a rock in the middle of nowhere.”

Dora squeezed his hand, a warm feeling of relief creeping over her. With Diccon home, surely everything would now be all right and she could perhaps stop worrying. If that were possible. “There’ll be none of that here,” she whispered. “You’re home now. Home and safe.”

They followed Bella into the breakfast room, where a footman stood to one side of a row of domed, silver cloches on the long sideboard.

The enticing smell of savory food filled the room, mingling with the strong aroma of freshly brewed coffee, Bella’s favorite morning beverage.

Bella had already taken her seat and was pouring the coffee.

Diccon held out a chair for Dora, and she sat down beside Bella. The seat at the head of the table stood vacant, but he hesitated, standing immobile for several pregnant seconds, staring at it.

Bella broke the silence. “You will find that is your place, Cousin Richard, so the sooner you occupy it, the better. Then we can all begin eating. I confess myself quite famished even though I had to forego my morning gallop.”

Dora bit her lip. Why was Bella behaving so coldly? Anyone would think she wasn’t pleased to have dear Diccon home. But of course, she didn’t know him and how wonderful he was. How easy it was to forget that for Bella, Diccon’s return might not mean the same as it did for her.

Richard put a hand on the back of the seat Marcus had occupied until so recently. “I suppose it is. When I was a boy, my place was at the very bottom of the table.”

“With me,” Dora put in. “And Grace, of course, when she was allowed to breakfast here instead of in the nursery.”

Diccon grinned. “And we only did that for the last year I lived here, as I recall. Before that it was nursery breakfasts for all of us. Except Marcus, of course.” She well remembered that.

As though he expected the chair to bite him, Diccon took his place at the head of the table.

Might sitting in Marcus’s seat be like when one of the dogs went into a new kennel and cocked its leg on everything it found?

Dora shocked herself at the irreverent thought.

She should not be comparing two dukes to a pair of hounds.

“Coffee?” Bella asked, her tone airy, as though she welcomed strangers who turned out to be long-lost heirs into her home every day of the week. Her cousin certainly possessed admirable sangfroid. But then, she’d already known that.

Richard nodded. “Thank you.” And Bella poured him a cup.

She set down the silver coffee pot. “I discovered our new duke in the strangest of places, Dora. You will not guess.”

Judging by the bits of straw adhering to his clothing, Dora suspected she might well have been able to do just that. But she liked to humor Bella, so she didn’t say anything.

“In the stables. And I mean in them. I think he’d spent the night sleeping with his horse.”