Page 33 of A Duke Never Tells

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

MEG PINWELL

Meg ran toward the foyer. She made it three steps, then her ankle gave out. Gasping, she threw out her hands so she wouldn’t fall on her face, but a strong hand gripped the back of her gown and then swung her up into his arms. “James,” she gasped. “Put me down!”

“No. I told you that I won’t see you injured again. Stop flailing.”

Oh, curse her stupid ankle, anyway. “Let me go!”

Something had gone very wrong. James Riniken wasn’t James Riniken but James Clay, but James Clay was Elliott Riniken, and the butler was… the duke ? The man she didn’t want to marry was the man with whom she’d fallen in love? Now she just wanted to faint and let everything figure itself out before she opened her eyes again. If this was what it felt like to go mad, she didn’t like it. Not at all.

“Whoever they are, they’re already here,” James replied in a much calmer voice than the one she had used as he glanced toward the foyer. “Their timing leaves something to be desired, but calm yourself. I know the truth of who you are, Clara. It doesn’t make any difference to me.”

Clara? He thought she was Clara? “I am not Cl—”

“There you are!” Her mother stood in the foyer, her hands on her hips, while her father pointed his cane at Randall to keep the old footman at bay. “And you! Margaret Pinwell, Clara Bosley, explain yourselves!”

“Put me down,” Meg hissed again, hitting James on the shoulder. “Immediately.”

James relented, setting her on her feet, and she limped the last few steps to where her parents stood. They were here. And she had no idea what to say to them. How had they known where to find her and Clara in the first place? They’d both sent letters saying they were in London. But her own confusion didn’t matter compared to what she’d just witnessed—a man had nearly shot the duke, who wasn’t the duke, apparently, unless James had been pretending to be the duke…

Oh, perhaps that was it. James had been pretending to be the duke in order to save his half brother’s life. Yes, that must be it. That made sense. She turned around to find him directly behind her. “Were you pretending to be the duke to save the duke?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I wasn’t pretending. Just then, I wasn’t. Previously, I was. But—”

“You’re Earnhurst,” her father said, offering his hand. “You’re the spitting image of your father.”

“So I’ve been told,” James said, shaking her father’s hand. “And you are?”

“Brundon. Gregory Pinwell. The earl.” Her father shook himself. “And this is my wife, Josephine, Lady Brundon. We met when you were fifteen or so.”

“Did we? I don’t recall.” James inclined his head. “My lady.”

The countess curtsied. “Your Grace.”

“This is all wrong!” Meg yelled, still reaching for logic as she tumbled down a very deep hole. “Why are you even here, Papa? Mama?”

“Meg!” her mother chastised. “Control yourself, for heaven’s sake.”

James’s mouth snapped shut, his gaze whipping back to Meg and his complexion going white. “You’re…”

“I beg your pardon, Your Grace,” her father broke in, “but I believe you have been bamboozled. My daughter and her aunt were supposed to be in London. I had no idea that Clara would throw herself at you like a complete hoyden.”

“Gregory! Name calling won’t help,” the countess said, looking as if she couldn’t decide whether to begin swinging her reticule at people or run away.

“I didn’t throw myself at anyone!” Clara said from a few steps behind Meg. “But what the devil is going on?”

“Are you injured, Meg?” her father asked abruptly. “You’re limping.”

“I twisted my ankle. But this wasn’t—I don’t know what’s happening!” She put her hands over her face, wishing she had two more hands to cover her ears, even if that would make their pastor say she was blaspheming.

She heard the other man, the one who wasn’t the Duke of Earnhurst any longer, clear his throat. “If I may, perhaps we should speak one at a time, each tell what we know, and sort this out.”

“Yes, please,” her father returned. “Your Grace?”

“No. Choose someone else.”

Meg snuck a look at him through her fingers. He was still staring at her, his face pale and his hands clenched. “I’m not going first, either,” she stated, closing her fingers again and wishing she could stop herself from thinking as easily as she could stop herself from seeing. Nothing made sense. And the second she began to try to straighten it out, her mind started spinning like a top until she was too dizzy to think of anything.

“I’ll do it, shall I?” Clara, ever practical, said. “Meg decided she didn’t wish to marry a man about whom she knew nothing but what she’d read in the gossip pages. We determined to pretend we were visiting grand houses, stop here at Earnhurst, and see if we could speak to a few of his servants, see the house, and get a better idea of his character.”

“But who are Lady Sophronia and Mabel Gooster?” Meg’s father asked.

“We didn’t want to be caught snooping,” Clara went on, “and no one notices servants, so I pretended to be Lady Sophronia Frumple, and Meg became Mabel Gooster, my companion.”

“It would have succeeded, except that I fell down the stairs and sprained my ankle,” Meg interjected from behind her hands. “We were only supposed to be here for an hour or two. And the duke wasn’t supposed to be here, but he was, except he’s not the duke.”

The not-the-duke cleared his throat again. “His Grace arrived three days before the ladies’ visit,” he said. “We had been… at odds over how to begin repairs and renovation, and I believe when guests arrived for a tour of the house, he didn’t want to spend time entertaining them.”

“I was drunk,” James cut in, his voice still clipped. “I told the ladies that my man of business, Elliott Riniken here, was the duke, and I was James, his butler.”

“It was only a ruse meant for a few hours,” Elliott Riniken continued, “but Mabel—Lady… Lady Margaret—was injured, and we were stuck in our roles.”

The not-the-duke Riniken drew in a breath, and Meg lowered her hands a little to look at him. That was why he’d been older than she expected, and why his character hadn’t matched his reputation. “You’re not the duke,” she said, her voice wobbling.

Elliott shook his head. “I am not the duke. I am his man of business.” He wasn’t looking at her, though; his attention was on Clara. “But who are you, Sophie? It’s not Margaret. Is it Clara, then?”

“It’s Clara,” she affirmed, her voice calm but her hands twisting together. “Clara Bosley. I’m Meg’s aunt. Lady Josephine’s sister.”

“My much younger and more foolish sister,” the countess broke in.

“She was only helping me, Mama. Don’t blame Clara for this. It was my idea.”

“Oh, I’m blaming both of you. No wonder His Grace wants out of the marriage agreement, though why he prefers Clara, I have no idea. After seeing all this mayhem the two of you caused, I don’t even blame him. And you, asking us to break the agreement, too? You nearly put your father in his grave.”

Meg looked at James again. “You want Clara?”

He shook his head, taking a half step toward her. “I thought you were Clara. My valet overheard the two of you talking, and led us to believe that your… aunt was Lady Margaret Pinwell, and you were someone named Clara.”

“But I was a servant! I thought you were a servant!”

“I—”

“No, no, no.” Meg turned on her heel and limped out the front door. It was too much. She needed to think. She needed to breathe.

For a moment she considered drowning herself in the pond, a modern-day Ophelia, but that would only make more trouble for everyone, and the water looked cold. Instead, she headed around the other side of the house. His garden. His stupid garden that he meant to be a surprise for her, when she meant never to set eyes on it again after she and Clara left Earnhurst.

Pushing open the gate, she stepped through. Behind the walls it was quiet, and she took a deep breath. Birds flitted among the trees, while dragonflies swooped and buzzed lazily. The sounds sank into her, and for a moment she shut her eyes again, just listening.

Then she opened them. All around her, rainbow beds of hollyhocks bloomed in vibrant yellows and pinks and reds, while along the walls in raised beds he’d planted roses. Pinks and yellows, whites and reds, the warm, spicy scent encouraging her to take another deep breath, and another. Oh, and purple lavenders and lupins and daisies, so many kinds of flowers. Deep green leaves, trees, shade-covered benches—this was a garden that people dreamed about.

“What do you think?” James’s quiet voice came from behind her.

“It’s perfect.”

“I made it for you, you know. Everything you said you liked in a garden is here. Except for a working fountain, because it’ll take several more weeks to dig up the pipes and replace them.”

Meg faced him. He was still in his shirtsleeves, the arms rolled up to the elbows. How in the world had she taken him for anything but a duke? His confidence, his education, the way he used words like weapons—now that she knew, she didn’t understand how she could ever have believed him to be anything other than what he was.

“You thought Clara was me.”

“I did. I’ll thrash Goodfrey for that, later.”

“So, when you proposed to me earlier, you didn’t know who I was. Other than someone named Clara.”

James shrugged. “I can’t imagine a day where I can’t see you, chat with you, and pick you up off the ground.”

A reluctant laugh passed her lips. “I truly am generally more graceful than this.”

“I don’t care if you are, or not. I don’t care if you’re the woman my father wanted me to marry or not. You are the woman I want to marry, Margaret.”

“Meg,” she corrected automatically.

His lips curved in a warm smile. “Thank God for that. Meg. I have no idea what’s happened over the past eight days, but… I’m a cynical, jaded man, Meg, and a great many of the things you credited to Elliott are misdeeds of mine. I claim them all. But in my defense, I have never been in love. Not until I met you.”

“You asked me to marry you when you thought I was a lady’s companion.” Slowly the bits and bobs of conversation over the past days began to fall into place, like pieces of a puzzle she hadn’t known she was putting together. “You thought I might well have been a servant.”

“I had a plan in place, that we would never leave Earnhurst so no one would bother us. It was quite romantic, if I say so myself.”

“You’re James Clay.” Meg looked at him all over again: level gaze, a very slight smile on his face, and no hint at all that he was teasing her. “Why did you let all this happen to Earnhurst?”

He blinked, as if he hadn’t expected that question. “I’ve told you most of it,” he said after a moment, his words slow and thoughtful. “I put it on Elliott, of course, but most of the nonsense was indeed my fault.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Well, my mother died when I was nine. Five years later my father returned from India, Elliott Riniken in tow. Elliott had saved my father’s life, and they got on like… father and son should. I was jealous. And angry. And unmanageable. And then my father sent me away to Cambridge, then on to Oxford. I felt like I’d been replaced, that I wasn’t wanted, and so I decided I wanted nothing to do with him. Or, by extension, Earnhurst Castle. Or Riniken.”

“That must have been horrible and lonely. Why the change of heart?”

He held out his arm. “Might we sit beneath the tree? You’ve been on your feet for a long time.”

She had been, and her ankle was throbbing from the misuse of the morning. Wrapping her fingers around his bare arm, she limped over to the giant beech tree with him. “I like the tree here. Nice and shady, and I can see out my bedchamber window again.”

“If all this had happened tomorrow, I would have had some sunflowers planted behind the benches and some cushions for the seats.”

She sat, and he sat next to her, sliding his hand over to catch her fingers in his. The fog continued to clear, and it dawned on her that her parents and his father had signed an agreement a year ago for the two of them to marry. She could marry him. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Why the change of heart?” he repeated. “Someone kept dragging me down to Remiton’s bakery, where I had practically lived as a boy. She kept pointing out the bits of the property that were still beautiful, and weeping over the sad heap it had become.”

“I didn’t weep. I lamented.”

“Lamenting, then. You… I began remembering that I did love being here once, and you helped me do that. To be honest, I’ve never been a butler before, and—”

Meg snorted.

“Enough of that. I’ve now spent a great deal of time with you, my love, and with the six people who stayed here despite everything that had gone wrong. They are good people, if perhaps a bit mad. Randall is quite a hand at piquet; don’t let his mild appearance fool you. But they love Earnhurst. They like being here, and would do anything to see it whole again. And six—seven—people who truly care about something can be very persuasive.”

He meant it. He meant every word of it. And he would have married her even if she’d been a servant. Meg twined her fingers with his. “I have to tell you that I don’t know if I would have said yes to your proposal earlier.”

James frowned. “That’s not—”

“No, I have to say it. I wanted to say yes, but I kept thinking that I would be ruined, and you would lose your chance to return to Society because you were, you know, illegitimate at the time, and a horrid butler, and my parents would be so hurt and disappointed in me. I don’t know if I could have done it.”

For a long moment he looked at her, his gray eyes contemplative. “We live in a world where our station in life matters. I wasn’t risking mine by proposing to you. I was only risking my reputation, which has never particularly troubled me. Given what you thought you knew about me, you would have been ruined. Society would not accept you. And with me as a husband, unemployed, illegitimate, and clearly with no skills other than gambling… I don’t blame you. I don’t think I would have married me either under those circumstances.”

“I wanted to, though. Very much.”

“You wanted to marry James the butler. How do you feel about James the duke, though?” Standing, still holding her hand, he sank to one knee in front of her. “Will you marry me and live here with me and help me make it beautiful again?”

For once bereft of words, Meg nodded. “I will marry you, James Clay, if you’ll promise to hire an actual butler. You may continue, however, to bring me breakfast in bed as often as you’d like.”

“That will be very, very often,” he murmured, drawing her down onto his bent leg and catching her mouth in a kiss. “In fact, we may never leave the bed.”

Meg kissed him back, tangling her fingers into his disheveled brown hair that still boasted part of a dead leaf and a twig. Everything here had been mad and nonsensical, and she’d adored nearly every minute of it. To have a lifetime of chatting with James, and kissing him, and waking up with him beside her—that was a fairy tale come true.

Clara would be disappointed that she’d chosen a traditional life, of course, but— “Clara!” She stood up. “We have to help Clara. My parents will be so angry with her, and because she’s so stubborn, she’ll try to take all the blame for this. They’ll never let me see her again.”

Climbing to his feet again, as well, James swept her up into his arms. “We’ll go find Clara. But you’re finished with walking for the next twenty minutes.”

“Very well. But hurry! She’ll storm away and become a hermit somewhere. Lord knows she can live off the land if she needs to.”

Chuckling, James strode back to the house with her in his arms. Her James, her house. Her life, now. And she adored him, and it, more—better—than she ever could have imagined.